WESTERN DO-IT-YOURSELF Gigabyte DIGITAL Black2 Steam Box Brix Pro SSD and HDD How to get SteamOS Full-on desktop together in one running on your PC power you can hold chassis! PG. 82 PG. 66 in your hand! PG. 53

minimum BS • MARCH 2014 • www.maximumpc.com THE CHEAPSKATE'S GUIDE TO POWER COMPUTING

• Tips for saving on hardware • Pointers to the best deal sites • A guide to free and cheap digital content • Instructions for building a $600 PC • And so much more!

Gaming Keyboards We review six high- performance planks PG. 40

where we put stuff table of contents

WESTERN DO IT YOURSELF GIGABYTE DIGITAL BLACK2 STEAM BOX BRIX PRO SSD and HDD How to get SteamOS Full-on desktop together in one running on your PC power you can hold chassis! PG. 82 PG. 66 in your hand! PG. 53

MINIMUM BS • MARCH 2014 • www.maximumpc.com THE inside CHEAPSKATE'S TO POWER COMPUTING On the Cover GUIDE Illustration by

• Tips for saving on hardware Georg Zumbulev MARCH 2014 • Pointers to the best deal sites • A guide to free and cheap digital content Quickstart • Instructions for building a $600 PC • And so much more!

GAMING KEYBOARDS We review six high- performance planks PG. 40 08 The News Hardware vendors commit to SteamOS; Windows XP death watch; Gigabit Internet over phone lines?

Features 14 The List The 10 coolest things we saw 22 at CES. 16 Head to Head Nvidia GeForce Experience vs. AMD Gaming Evolved beta.

R&D Razer Project Christine 61 How to What Windows could learn from smartphones; fine-tune your SSD; edit photos with Gimp.

66 Build It Didn't score a Steam Machine in the beta? Neither did we, so we show you how get SteamOS up and running on your PC. 22 40 48 Cheapskate's Premium Palm-of-your- Letters Friend Planks hand pcs We'll pinch your pennies until There's never been a better Tiny PCs (UFCCs) are growing 18 DOCTOR Abe screams! How to econo- time to update your keyboard. in power and popularity, but mize your rig and still love it. We put six through the paces. should you build one? 92 COMMENTS

In the Lab + 72 80 84 86 AVADirect mini ANtec Kuhler Acer Apsire S7 Cooler Master Cube Gaming PC h20 950 Cosmos SE MORE

maximumpc.com MAR 2014 MAXIMUMPC 5

a thing or two about a thing or two editorial

MAXIMUMPC Gordon EDITORIAL Editor-in-Chief: Katherine Stevenson Deputy Editor: Gordon Mah Ung Mah Ung Senior Editor: Josh Norem Online Managing Editor: Jimmy Thang Associate Editor: Tom McNamara Contributing Editors: Nathan Edwards, Alex Castle Contributing Writers: Ben Andrews, Tom Halfhill, Phil Iwanuik, Ben Kim, Paul Lilly, Thomas McDonald, David Murphy, Quinn Norton, Brittany Vincent Copy Editor: Mary Ricci Intern: Clark Crisp Editor Emeritus: Andrew Sanchez

ART Art Director: Richard Koscher Photographer: Mark Madeo

BUSINESS Vice President, Consumer Media: Kelley Corten, [email protected] Vice President, Sales & Business Development: Nate Hunt, [email protected] Associate Sales Director: Stacy Gaines, [email protected] Regional Sales Manager: Michael Plump, [email protected] Regional Sales Manager: Tad Perez, [email protected] Regional Sales Manager: Austin Park, [email protected] You Really Regional Sales Manager: Jessica Reinert, [email protected] Senior Manager Sales Ops & Monetization: Michael Grinde, mgrinde@ futureus.com Vice President, Marketing & Sales Development: Rhoda Bueno Do Like Us Director of Consumer Marketing: Lisa Radler Newsstand Director: Bill Shewey This year’s CES was an encouraging she claimed that’s changed, and Intel— PRODUCTION Production Director: Michael Hollister sign for any supporters of the PC. The the world’s largest chip company, I will Production Manager: Larry Briseno gadget and mainstream tech press, remind you—will do all it can to keep PC Project Manager: Jennifer Lim Production Coordinator: Linh Chau-Ward who usually dismiss the PC as being enthusiasts happy and, of course, buy-

FUTURE US, INC. less useful and less desirable than a ing more hardware. 4000 Shoreline Court, Suite 400, South San Francisco, CA 94080 typewriter, packed a good-size room Yeah, I know. The cynics among you Tel: 650-872-1642, www.futureus.com just to see Gabe Newell of Valve intro- are rolling your eyes like a slot ma- President: Rachelle Considine Vice President, Finance & Business Management: Lulu Kong duce 13 PCs made for playing games chine because you’ve heard this all be- Vice President / General Manager, Digital: Charlie Speight with the upcoming SteamOS. I also fore. One jaded PC vendor I spoke with General Counsel: Anne Ortel Director, Human Resources: Eric Buksa met with more than a dozen PC and PC after my meeting pointed out that walk-

SUBSCRIBER CUSTOMER SERVICE component vendors who all seemed ing Intel’s gigantic booth at CES you Maximum PC Customer Care, very upbeat about the PC’s future and wouldn’t even know that Intel makes P.O. Box 51592, Harlan, IA 51593-1352 Website: www.maximumpc.com/customerservice their ability make money off of it. CPUs that fit into that dinosaur known Tel: 800-274-3421 The PC’s Sally Field moment really as the desktop PC. Email: [email protected] came to me when I sat down with Intel That’s true, but acknowledgement BACK ISSUES Website: www.maximumpc.com/shop vice president Lisa Graff, who is now in is the first step in the right direction. Tel: 800-865-7240 charge of the Desktop Client Platforms Graff said that there are good things on REPRINTS Group. That means she’s the person the radar for enthusiasts that will be Future US, Inc., 4000 Shoreline Court, Suite 400, South San Francisco, CA 94080 calling a lot of the shots on the fate of made public once the time is right. Website: www.futureus.com Tel: 650-872-1642, Fax 650-872-2207 the desktop PC, which makes her a very As always, we will withhold judg- important person at Intel, and to us. So, ment until we see these good things, what did Graff say to make us think of but just hearing someone say that the Sally Field’s “You like me. You really PC enthusiast is important is enough to like me!” moment? keep hope alive. “PC enthusiasts are important to Intel.” That statement alone was enough to floor me because, frankly, we haven’t been feeling the love from Intel over Future produces carefully targeted maga- the last few quarters. The company zines, websites and events for people with a passion. We publish more than 180 maga- has seemingly been laser-focused zines, websites and events and we export or license our publications to 90 countries on mobile phones and tablets. And as across the world. much as I didn’t want to acknowledge

Future plc is a public Non-executive Chairman: Peter Allen it, there has been a gnawing fear that company quoted on the Chief Executive: Mark Wood Intel would toss us aside without a mo- London Stock Exchange. Group Finance Director: Graham Harding Tel +44 (0)20 7042 4000 (London) ment’s notice. www.futureplc.com Tel +44 (0)1225 442244 (Bath) Graff even acknowledged that the Gordon Mah Ung is Maximum PC’s company hasn’t done everything it could deputy editor, senior hardware expert, ©2014 Future US, Inc. All rights reserved. No part of this magazine to keep enthusiasts happy of late, but and all-around muckraker. may be used or reproduced without the written permission of Future US, Inc. (owner). All information provided is, as far as Future (owner) is aware, based on information correct at the time of press. Readers are advised to contact manufacturers and retailers directly with regard to products/services referred to in this magazine. We welcome reader submissions, but cannot promise that they will ↘ submit your questions to: [email protected] be published or returned to you. By submitting materials to us you agree to give Future the royalty-free, perpetual, non-exclusive right to publish and reuse your submission in any form in any and all media and to use your name and other information in connection with the submission. maximumpc.com MAR 2014 MAXIMUMPC 7 quickstart the beginning of the magazine, where the articles are small

Hardware Vendors Line Up Behind SteamOS Questions still linger about the viability of Steam Machines

If there was any doubt about “My favorite statistic [about going to be challenged—that and sway Valve has in the in- the excitement level around PC gaming] is that Dota 2 is there was success in propri- dustry today. Valve Software’s upcoming bigger than Monday Night etary platforms in the living Still, there are many ques- SteamOS, it was erased at Football,” Newell said. In fact, room and in mobile, and that tions that linger, such as when the Consumer Electronics there are more than 65 mil- that was going to cause our the OS will actually be ready, Show in early January, when lion Steam accounts, with 6 entire industry to step away when hardware will actually the company highlighted no million people using the plat- from the opportunity of open- be for sale, and how much fewer than 13 hardware ven- form at any moment. While ness. We started to think, Valve’s own revolutionary but dors who have pledged to of- Valve is but one developer, its ‘What can we do?’ There are incomplete gamepad control- fer Steam Machines based on online store is the number one lots of people who can take on ler will cost. Valve’s Linux-based operating choice for PC gaming, which this challenge, but what are Hardware partners we system for gaming. practically makes Newell the some of the pieces that Valve spoke with estimated that In front of a packed room pastime’s ambassador. And could try to help with?” their Steam Machines would of journalists from around the it’s PC gaming that Newell The answer was SteamOS, be available in the second globe, Valve CEO Gabe Newell says he’s trying to preserve which today is pretty much or third quarter of this year. unveiled PCs of all shapes, and expand with SteamOS. a Windows-free way to run Some were concerned that sizes, and prices that will one Newell continued, “Now, Steam’s Big Picture mode in hard information and sample day—at a time still to be de- a couple of years ago, we the living room. But rather controllers haven’t exactly termined—run the company’s started to get pretty worried than laying out specific hard- been forthcoming from Valve, nascent SteamOS. that maybe that openness was ware specs, such as minimum even though Valve has shipped and maximum recommenda- 300 prototype units and con- tions, Valve is leaving it to PC trollers to beta participants. vendors to decide what to do. That’s not exactly a sur- “There’s a lot of variation prise. The privately owned [in Steam Machines], low-end Valve has long been known for to high-end, both in the devic- being incredibly secretive and es you see here and in product almost eccentric in its handling lines that people are going to of the outside world, as well as have,” Newell said. “That’s working on “Valve Time” with one of the strengths that the projects like Half Life 3. This PC has. Customers can get time, however, the company the experience they want, is dragging along more than a while software developers can dozen PC vendors, and there’s be guaranteed a stable plat- still been no response from form for delivering value.” the Bellevue, WA–based com- The fact that 13 hardware pany’s neighbor in Redmond, vendors—including Alienware, which can be quite protective CyberPower, Digital Storm, of its hardware-partner turf. Falcon Northwest, iBuypower, –Gordon Mah Ung Origin PC, and Maingear— Alienware’s tiny Steam Machine will pack an Intel CPU and Nvidia would sidle up to the SteamOS graphics and will cost $500 with a controller. (Pen is for scale.) trough shows the support

8 MAXIMUMPC MAR 2014 maximumpc.com Lian-Li Unveils Tom Desk-Shaped Halfhill Case Prototype Fast In January, case manufacturer Li- Forward an-Li revealed the DK01 chassis, which looks like a desk with a com- puter case built into it. We’ve seen a couple of similar ideas floating Dumb around lately, but none as stream- lined as this one. Since this unit is Terminals a prototype, its specs could change by the time you read this, or Lian- Look Li may decide not to sell it. But for now, it’s about 32 inches wide, 31 Smarter inches tall, and 24 inches deep. The Google’s lobotomized Chromebooks are surface of the desk can be glass or surprisingly popular. Last year, according acrylic. Inside, it has space for over to NPD market analysts, 21 percent of the a dozen 3.5-inch drives, an E-ATX notebook PCs sold were Chromebooks, and motherboard, 16-inch video cards, they’re outselling Apple’s notebooks by five and seven 120mm fans. Price and to one. The only hotter products are tablets. release date have not been an- I half-jokingly call them “lobotomized” nounced. –PL because they aren’t full-featured comput- ers. Mainly, they run web-based applications and store data files in the cloud, although they also have limited offline capability. In effect, Chromebooks are the latest incar- Incoming: Gigabit Internet over nation of dumb terminals—the primitive time-sharing video screens and keyboards Phone Lines attached to early mainframes and minicom- The International Telecommunication Union (ITU) has announced that it’s puters. In the 1990s, Sun Microsystems re- begun work on G.fast, which would allow gigabit Internet speeds over con- vived the concept as “network computers” or ventional copper wire, according to tech website Extremetech. In real- “thin clients” that ran Java applications from world applications, you would probably max out at around half that speed, websites or a small local drive. since there would be signal overlap with FM radio, and residential cop- Most thin clients flopped, but Chrome- per wiring is susceptible to line noise and cross-talk. G.fast also wouldn’t books look more viable. For all we love about be usable past about 250 feet. However, that last stretch from the street conventional PCs, they’re still a pain in the cabinet to the computer in your home is by far the most expensive leg of ass. Even power users struggle to maintain the journey. As long as there’s fiber running through the neighborhood, them and protect them from buggy software G.fast could become a competitive alternative to cable Internet and cur- and intrusive malware. Businesses waste rent DSL offerings. –TM billions of dollars on IT support. All of us reading this magazine are probably the first- call help desk for our family and friends. Of course, Chromebooks aren’t for ev- Puget Systems Talks Hardware eryone, but they’re a godsend for casual us- ers and many office workers and students. Reliability Power users may prefer them over a tablet In late December, boutique PC builder Puget Systems produced its annual list of the for occasional use. As I predicted long ago, most reliable hardware, which is based on the company’s testing procedures for when broadband Internet access becomes determining which hardware ven- as universal and reliable as electricity, the dors it wants to work with. (Puget objections to network-centric computers writes a regularly updated blog fade away. Yes, a broken network connection about various aspects of PC hard- cripples them, but many tasks require Inter- ware and building.) The company net access anyway. For some folks, network said that motherboards are the dependency is a fair trade for easier mainte- most failure-prone of any com- nance and (potentially) greater security. ponent, with one out of every 25 Tablets have proved that a personal com- units being DOA. Only four boards puter needn’t be onerous to maintain and it looked at were error-free. Two use. Chromebooks are basically Linux tab- were Asus workstation boards, lets with keyboards. It’s time to terminate and the others were the MSI FM2- the snobbish prejudice against “dumb termi- A75IA-E53 and the Asus F2A85-V nals.” This concept won’t die, because sim- Pro. Puget also said that Kings- plicity simply makes sense. ton produces the most reliable RAM that it’s tested so far. You can Tom Halfhill was formerly a senior check out the full blog post here: editor for Byte magazine and is now an http://bit.ly/1lQ04KQ. –PL analyst for Microprocessor Report.

maximumpc.com MAR 2014 MAXIMUMPC 9 quickstart Oculus VR Thomas Starts Game McDonald Publisher Game Department Theory Oculus VR, designers of the Oculus Rift head-mounted display, has announced the creation of a department The Citizen within the company spe- cifically for coordinating with Kane of game publishers and studios. It’s headed by David DeMar- Interactive tini, a veteran of Electronic Arts who worked his way up to Fiction senior vice president before The past few years have seen titles like Pro- leaving the gaming giant. He teus and Dear Esther pushing the bound- told website Gamasutra.com, aries of interactive narrative. I didn’t like “I’m figuring out how to part- either of those games, but that’s not the ner effectively with big developers, small developers, all the way down to the individual point; their creators were willing to kick at who just wants to make something great for the Rift.” From this, we might assume that the boundaries of tech and gameplay to cre- Oculus VR will not be developing its own games. At press time, the company had not yet ate new moods and experiences. Being the committed to a specific price or release date for its device. –BV first is never easy. For every D.W. Griffith who writes a new language for an art form, there’s an Orson Wells to come along and make that language sing in previously un- imagined ways. Windows XP Finally Dwindling In late December, two data research companies shared some interesting And the creators of The Stanley Parable stats on Windows XP. NetMarketShare reported that XP was installed on have done just that. It takes the “first-per- fewer than 30 percent of PCs, while StatCounter estimated it at fewer son walker” (FPW) genre and turns it into than 20 percent. This indicates an accelerated transition toward Win- a dizzying, brilliant commentary on games dows 7 and 8. Microsoft is finally dropping support for XP in April, which and gamers, individuality and conformity, is the likely cause of this shift. The OS came out in October 2001 and has and the relationship between designer enjoyed unexpected longevity, thanks to Windows Vista’s troubled public and player. It may just be a souped-up image. A few third-party companies have stepped up to offer security choose-your-own adventure tale, but it’s patches after Microsoft stops doing so, though how they plan to do that unrelentingly clever, overflowing with without access to the OS’s actual source code remains to be seen. –PL ideas, jokes, hairpin mood shifts, and nar- rative jolts, all of it adding up to a striking meta-commentary on the process of mak- ing and playing games. From the moment the narrator (one of the best written and performed pieces of Tech Tragedies and Triumphs voice acting since GLaDOS) tells you to A monthly snapshot of what’s up and down in tech take the left door, and you take the right, you begin to shape the tale through myriad endings and beginnings. The “good,” con- ventional ending is the least interesting, Triumphs Tragedies while the odd, sometimes surreal, often hilarious “wrong turns” are endlessly fas- 4K Panels McAfee cinating. At one point, you find yourself in This month, we saw the rollout of the Intel has dumped the notorious the game playing Minecraft and Portal. first sub-$1,000 4K LCDs. Sadly, they brand name in favor of “Intel The creators of this Chinese puzzle are all TN panels. Security.” Gee, we wonder why. box understand gamers, and they’re fas- cinated by the strange relationship that Steam Radeon R9 290 Cards forms between an individual and a virtual The online service hosted a record 7.6 For the past month, these cards environment with its own telos and its own million concurrent users in December have been impossible to pur- rules. It probes the illusion of choice in a 2013. It has 65 million total users. chase—thanks, coin miners! constructed space, yet oddly enough, the only people who will get the joke are those Intel Whiz Kid AMD Mantle Patch who routinely surrender to the very tropes 16-year-old Joey “marshmallow The highly anticipated Mantle being mocked by the designers. That’s not cannon” Hudy became the youngest update for BF4 is on indefinite just meta. That’s meta3. intern ever hired by Intel. Maybe he’ll hold while Dice sorts out the be our intern next. game’s issues.

Thomas L. McDonald is Editor-at-Large of Games Magazine.

10 MAXIMUMPC MAR 2014 maximumpc.com Toughpower Digital Power Supply

Water3.0 Extreme

VOLOS

MEKA G1 Illuminated Chaser A71

Thermaltake : www.thermaltakeusa.com Tt eSPORTS : www.ttesports.com

COPYRIGHT @ 2014 THERMALTAKE GROUP ALL RIGHT RESERVED quickstart Linksys Resurrects the WRT54G Quinn Back in December 2002, when cable had one HD channel and the Boston Red Sox were lovable underdogs, networking hardware manufacturer Linksys debuted the Norton WRT54G, an 802.11g wireless router. The device “just worked” to a degree that us- Byte ers had not seen before, and it remained highly reliable and operational for years. As Linksys attempted to transition the user base to new products, loyalists remained Rights steadfastly glued to the WRT54G, to the point of tricking the router into running cus- tom versions of Linux to keep its features up-to-date. Linksys eventually moved on to other things, got bought out by Cisco, who eventually sold it to Belkin, and the WRT54G gradually faded away as people upgraded to 802.11n, USB ports, and other features. Wa r Is Peace, But Linksys has not forgotten those days, and it has announced that it’s resurrect- ing the WRT54G, at least in spirit. This new device, known as the WRT190AC, uses the Vulns Are same familiar blue-and-black color scheme and stackable design. But, as the model name implies, it’s been upgraded to 802.11ac, the fastest Wi-Fi speed on the market. National Also under the hood is a dual-core ARM chip, 128MB of flash memory, and 256MB of RAM. Compare that to the WRT54G’s 2–8MB of flash and 8–32MB of RAM (depending Security on the model), and you can see the possibilities. Linksys also promises Linux support The end of 2013 was rocked by revelations out-of-the-box, whereas support for that on the WRT54G ranged quite a bit from one that the NSA had weakened crypto standards version to another. The 1900AC will even have a USB 3.0 and eSATA port. The $300 and inserted backdoors into security soft- price tag, however, may not be so popular when it launches this spring. –TM ware, news that Americans greeted by cock- ing their heads like a confused dog watching television. In fact, this has been one of the most shocking of the Snowden revelations, but it’s hard to immediately see why. Part of it is that maybe the agency shouldn’t spy on everyone on the planet, but the other reason is that weak standards and backdoors can never be just for the NSA, especially given how good it’s been at keeping its secrets. Hostile governments, organized crime, hacking groups for hire, or even quiet bands of malevolent mathematicians can and probably have found these weakness- es, compromising the security of innocent people whom the NSA has no interest in, or in protecting. This crypto doesn’t just protect banks. It protects medical records, shipping, travel, and all kinds of critical in- frastructure the world over. This is terribly wrong, and signs of an agency out of control, because the NSA has Haswell-E PC Builder two missions. One is the well-known “spy on everyone in the world as much as possible” Coming Accepting mission, staffed by thousands, aided by fed- This Year Bitcoins eral contractors, and so well-funded that Intel has announced that its next Boutique system builder Xidax they have to shovel money they can’t spend generation of LGA2011 CPUs will ar- announced in January that it will fast enough into the Potomac. But the other rive in Q3 of 2014. This workstation- begin accepting Bitcoins as a mission is to cryptographically secure Amer- grade chip, dubbed “Haswell-E,” will form of payment, making it the ican infrastructure, which we can presume is sport eight cores, a DDR4 controller, first company of its kind in the five depressed guys in a basement facing the and native USB 3.0. Unfortunately, it United States to do so. In a state- world’s worst adversary: the rest of the NSA. will not be compatible with current ment, Xidax executive operations Whatever its intentions, weakening your LGA2011. Instead, Intel will release officer Zack Shutt said that many own infrastructure is clearly insane, remi- the “X99” motherboard chipset customers had asked about being niscent of East German Stasi laws that made alongside the processor. Tech web- able to use the volatile crypto- all door locks weak enough so they could site Digitimes estimates that the currency, and the company was break into any house. The government’s ex- initial batch of processors will hover excited to try it out. Bitcoins have cuse for making everyone more vulnerable? around the $1,000 mark. As its name skyrocketed in value since their National Security—an Orwellian master- indicates, Haswell-E will use a 22nm debut in early 2009, with a single stroke. The NSA won’t stop this insanity, and process, and we’re told that it will coin worth $842 as this issue goes why should it? Any attack would just confirm have “X” and “K” variants, as before. to press. However, this is down our need for the agency. Intel has not discussed power con- from a recent high in four digits, sumption, but that’s expected to be so it remains to be seen if Xidax’s lower, as well. –TM initiative will be successful in the Quinn Norton writes about copyright long term. –PL for Wired News and other publications.

12 MAXIMUMPC MAR 2014 maximumpc.com quickstart

The 10 Coolest Things we saw at CES 2014

CyberPower Battle Box Aorus X7 Gaming Laptop No PC Gamer likes lugging around their You typically give up graphics performance with desktop to LAN parties—CyberPower thin notebooks, but Aorus aims to fix that with addresses that with its handy lunch- its X7, packing two 765M GPUs while keeping the box-like PC. chassis super slim.

AaMD N no PC Speaking of thin, AMD’s Nano HTPC is slim enough to carry in your pocket. The unit we looked at was equipped with AMD’s Mullins APU, 2GB of RAM, and 256GB of storage.

Gigabyte Brix Gaming PC Gigabyte’s Brix Gaming PC will squeeze mobile graphics from either Nvidia or AMD into its tiny NUC-style chassis.

Asus 28-inch 4K Monitor Until recently, 4K monitors cost an arm and a leg, but with Asus announcing its $799 PB287Q display, you shouldn’t have to sell your kidney to enjoy UHD content.

14 MAXIMUMPC MAR 2014 maximumpc.com PrioVR Suit Alienware Steam The Oculus Rift is undoubtedly cool, but we won’t get Machine true VR until we can control games with our bodies. This year’s show was big for the PC Enter the PrioVR: a spiffy suit that accurately tracks crowd, with the reveal of all the Steam your limbs. Machines. Leading the charge was Alien- ware with its unique little entrant. Expect Intel/Nvidia specs.

Crystal Cove Oculus Rift Razer Project Christine Headset Easily the biggest surprise of the show was Razer’s modular PC, dubbed Project Chris- Speaking of Oculus Rift, the new Crystal Cove unit tine. The idea is to make changing compo- shown at CES adds positional tracking so you can nents as easy as plugging in USB devices. lean into objects, and offers a much sharper display.

Nvidia’s Tegra K1 Chip Using the Kepler architecture and 192 CUDA cores, Nvidia’s new mobile superchip will offer amazing graphics on par with the PlayStation 3, while reportedly sipping just 5W of power.

maximumpc.com MAR 2012 MAXIMUMPC 15 quickstart

BY Josh Norem

Nvidia GeForce Experience vs. AMD Gaming Evolved Beta AMD and Nvidia have always fought fiercely on the hardware front, and now the battleground is expanding to include software. Both companies recently released do- it-all software clients that help you capture video, stream it, optimize your games, and lots more. And both are free. But the two packages take very different approaches, so we figured we’d pit them head-to-head to see which one is our favorite.

ROUND 1 ROUND 2

Game Library Social Features The prime directive for both Both software clients include of these apps is to remove the features to help you share your mystery that surrounds game gaming with friends and strang- optimization, since most end ers, though Nvidia’s offering is users don’t know what set- much more limited than AMD’s. tings to select for their hard- Nvidia allows for direct stream- ware (MSAA, HBAO, PhysX, ing to Twitch, and also lets you TressFX, etc.), and the games capture gameplay footage via themselves are equally in- ShadowPlay for uploading to capable of determining this. YouTube, and both features Both software packages make work very well, but that’s about optimizing a game as easy as it for GeForce Experience. clicking a button in order to AMD’s Gaming Evolved, how- use pre-determined settings. ever, is an entire social network Just like with SLI and Cross- instead of just an app, as you can Fire profiles, these settings add friends from all the various have to be created and then gaming platforms, including uploaded to the client, and Steam, Origin, Xbox, PlaySta- both packages support only a tion, and PC. When you log into limited number of games so both the client and the website, far. Having a large library of you can see who is playing what, Nvidia’s software lets supported games is the goal and easily broadcast to Twitch or you adjust the optimiza- though, so for this category watch other peoples’ streams. tion settings for speed it’s cut-and-dried—Nvidia so The app makes it easy to share or image quality, and is far supports 136 titles while your stream on Facebook and platform-agnostic. AMD supports 69. Both com- Twitter, too, and you can access panies deserve kudos for sup- all these features without ever porting titles that are bundled leaving the game. with its competitor’s GPUs.

Winner: Winner: GeForce Experience Gaming Evolved

16 MAXIMUMPC MAR 2014 maximumpc.com AMD uses crowd- sourcing for game optimization recom- mendations, but also plugs you into a social network of gamers.

ROUND 3 ROUND 4 ROUND 5

Streaming Optimizing Accuracy Special Features Streaming your gaming foot- Both of these apps take a dif- Though these apps are de- age is the cool thing to do these ferent approach to determin- signed to optimize your games days, and though both apps let ing the “best” settings for your and to let you stream or save you broadcast to Twitch, the hardware. AMD uses crowd- your footage, both also include And the Nvidia app is head-and-shoul- sourcing and analyzes con- several interesting features we ders better than AMD’s offer- nected players’ frame rate and consider to be bonus content. Winner ing at this time, just because PC configuration to see what On the Nvidia side, the app will capturing or streaming your works and what doesn’t work, always keep your drivers up to Is… footage doesn’t affect your while Nvidia relies on its own date, and tells you when it last frames-per-second like it does testers to figure out the best checked for an update. It will Both of these apps add a lot on the AMD app. The Nvidia configurations. In our testing also let you stream a game of value and new functional- ShadowPlay app lets you send on a high-end Ultra PC, nei- to one of its Shield handheld ity to the GPU currently re- the stream to Twitch or to the ther utility was perfect, but devices. The Gaming Evolved siding in your PC, but in this hard drive, and we never no- overall, the Nvidia software app, on the other hand, does so battle we prefer Nvidia’s ticed any performance impact, was more accurate, telling many things it’s overwhelm- GeForce Experience be- as it uses the built-in H.264 en- us to leave things where they ing. You can chat with people cause its core functionality coder in the GTX 600 and GTX were, or turn them down just on different gaming platforms, works almost flawlessly. It 700 series cards. The Gaming a smidgen (everything was set earn “reward points” that can gives better game-settings Evolved app, on the other hand, to max). The AMD software, be redeemed for games and recommendations, stream- killed our frame rate, and the however, told us to turn ev- gear, and you can also add ing is smooth as silk, and fact that there’s no way to dic- erything down in all the games widgets to the desktop dock, we also love its capturing tate the quality of the stream we tested (Far Cry 3, Crysis 3, making it a fun app to use while tools. AMD’s app is certainly (which you can do with Nvidia) etc.), which is not good advice. gaming if you want to quickly full-featured, but feels too makes broadcasting very dif- We also like the “My Rig” sec- chat or open a web browser. unpolished. Of course, the ficult due to a lack of control. tion of the Nvidia software that As cranky old men, we prefer AMD app is still in beta, so We know AMD is working on listed our config, as the AMD the slimmed-downed Nvidia hopefully future versions improving this, but for now, software made us wonder if software, but there’s no deny- will iron out the bugs. Nvidia is the clear winner. it even knew what kind of ma- ing Gaming Evolved has more chine we were using. extra features.

Winner: Winner: Winner: GeForce Experience GeForce Experience Gaming Evolved

maximumpc.com MAR 2014 MAXIMUMPC 17 quickstart

THIS MONTH THE DOCTOR TACKLES... > Too Much GPU > Wi-Fi Upgrades > Disabling SkyDrive

From Integrated to There’s nothing wrong with correctly supporting Advanced the Inspiron 15R? At present I Top-Shelf overkill, and your rig can cer- Format drives like the WD can’t use the 5GHz band. After almost 30 years developing tainly handle the 780 Ti, but if Green series with 4KB sec- —Carlos H Castillo software on stock PCs, I finally you’re just getting into applica- tors instead of 512B sectors. performed my first build from tions that need more graphical Depending on the model, The Doctor Responds: It looks the pages of Maximum PC. I oomph, the Doc suggests start- Thermaltake lists its BlacX like you ought to be able to put scoured your pages from many ing with something cheaper, docks as supporting “up to that Intel Wireless-AC card into issues and planned a build dur- like the GTX 760. It’s roughly a 2TB” or “up to 4TB” drives, your Inspiron 15R. The Inspiron ing a long weekend and it’s been third the price of the 780 Ti but but it depends on the USB takes a half-height mini-PCIe purring along for 18 months. has the oomph for gaming on controller inside the cradle, wireless card, like the 7260, I have a Core i5-3570K on an high settings on a 1080p panel. and its firmware. It’s also and the slot is user-accessi- Asus P8Z77.V board, with 16GB If you won’t be gaming and just possible that you can update ble—given a generous inter- RAM, two 128GB SSDs, a 3TB want a little more graphical the firmware for the USB pretation of “user-accessible.” backup drive, and 850W PSU in muscle for everyday tasks, controller on your cradle, but You do have to take apart most an NZXT Phantom 410 chas- you’ll be fine with something Thermaltake’s website is a of the laptop to get to it. Dell’s sis. Now I’m thinking of adding even less expensive. little wonky—we couldn’t find service manual for your model a graphics card. I don’t do a lot firmware update tools for the is at http://bit.ly/1crLreZ, and with graphics, so I’ve managed HD Storage MIA BlacX 5G, for example. we found a YouTube tutorial with onboard but I might do I recently bought a WD WD’s support page indicates for your model at http://bit.ly/ more. The GeForce 780 Ti sounds Green 3TB hard drive for that you may be able to get it Kedtkr. Be sure to download very cool. Will it work well in this backup purposes. I have it in to work if you attach the drive the appropriate drivers from system? Will overall perfor- a Thermaltake BlacX USB 3.0 directly to your motherboard’s Intel’s support site. mance improve? Apart from a cradle outside of the PC. I have SATA ports and format it as a Some laptop manufacturers Hyper 212 CPU cooler, I’m only tried a hundred different things GPT partition in Windows Disk use a whitelist in the BIOS to using the Phantom’s stock fans. I found online, from different Management, then remove it restrict which wireless cards you Will I need more cooling? partitioning hardware to and put it in the USB dock. can use with the laptop, but your —David Kates updating drivers and BIOS, but I particular model doesn’t seem can’t get the PC to recognize any Wireless-AC Upgrade to be one of those. Your model The Doctor Responds: Yes, more than 746GB. From what I have a Dell Inspiron 15R-5520 seems to have two antennas, and performance will certainly I saw online, lots of others are with an Intel Centrino Wire- the Intel 7260 has two antenna improve—that’s one of the best having the same problem. I run less N-2230. I just purchased leads, so everything looks good graphics cards on the market, a Phenom II X6 1090T in an MSI the Nighthawk Netgear there. Dell representatives period, and it’s going to be 890FXA-GD65 motherboard with router R7000. I would like to answering other peoples’ ques- faster than your integrated BIOS version 18.9, an AMD 7970, upgrade the wireless adapter. tions online seem to indicate that graphics by a factor of four or and 16GB of RAM. Any ideas I contacted Dell to no avail, the 15R 5520 can accommodate more. But if you’re not gaming would be appreciated. and can’t even find an email adapters with 5GHz bands, too. or doing much graphically in- —Gayle Curry address for Intel. Do you think The standard caveat ap- tensive work—and that seems that the Intel Network 7260 plies—neither Dell nor Intel to be the case—the Doc thinks The Doctor Responds: It looks HMWG Wi-Fi Wireless-AC 7260 support or recommend Wi-Fi the GeForce 780 Ti might be a like the problem is with that H/T Dual Band 2x2 AC + Blue- card installation by anyone but little overkill. Thermaltake BlacX cradle not tooth HMC is compatible with a professional technician, and ↘ submit your questions to: [email protected]

18 MAXIMUMPC MAR 2014 maximumpc.com there’s always the risk that it THE DOCTOR RESPONDS: Those Windows 8.1 without using a won’t work. But if it does, well, fi les are normal, provided cloud server? you’ll have legendary you’re using BitDefender anti- —Bruce Noren Wi-Fi speed on that Inspiron. virus. Bdlog.txt is a normal ac- tivity log, and the various bdr- THE DOCTOR RESPONDS: Yes, Mysterious Files im and bdr-bz fi les are related you can disable SkyDrive, but I am preparing to upgrade from to the Rescue Mode bootable it isn’t obvious. Once you’ve Windows 8 Pro to Windows Linux environment. Apparently installed Windows 8.1, run 8.1 Pro. While cleaning up my BitDefender just dumps all this gpedit.msc, either by typing it system and removing unneces- stuff into the root of the C drive into the search bar on the Start sary fi les, I noticed a string of rather than in a Program Files/ screen or by starting the Run fi les in my C folder, with names BitDefender folder. So it’s just command (Win+R) and typing like bdlog.txt, bdr-im or -bz, annoying, not malicious. it there. Go to Local Computer and so forth. I have attached Policy, then Computer Confi gu- a copy of the fi le names, but I GoodbyeDrive ration > Administrative Tem- have not been able to identify I have been reading about the plates > Windows Components what program they may belong new Windows and deciding > SkyDrive. You’ll see options to to. I was hoping you might whether to make the move. I save documents and settings to have an answer as to how I have no use for a touchscreen the local PC by default, instead can identify them so I don’t operating system, so it was of SkyDrive, but it sounds like remove something I need. As with relief to see it is now you want something more they occupy over 8GB of space possible to launch Windows drastic. The second option is it would be nice to know. So directly into the desktop mode. “Prevent the usage of SkyDrive far my Internet searches have However, I still have a concern. for fi le storage.” That’s the one not found anything and trying It appears that when Windows you want. Double-click it and, in various programs on my system 8.1 is installed it automatically the box that pops up, select to open them have not worked, sets8.25 itself in. up to save fi les to Enabled. This is somewhat although one fi le did have a note SkyDrive by default. This gives counterintuitive; you’re not We like BitDefender, but it stating it could be opened with a me8.0 great in. concern because I enabling SkyDrive, you’re en- dumps a whole lot of fi les relat- bootloader program. do not want to use any cloud abling the policy that disables ed to its Rescue Mode bootable 7.5 in. Linux environment directly —Eli Cohen servers. Is it possible to use SkyDrive. Thanks, Microsoft! onto the root of your C drive. WANTED: TECHIES. PROGRAMMERS. NETWORKERS.AD OK STUDYING LATE NIGHTS. LOOKING TO LEVEL UP.

You need your Microsoft, Cisco, or CompTIA certifications to advance. Now you can earn these as part of an IT degree. WGU offers bachelor’s and master’s degree programs that are designed to fit your busy life. We’re online, accredited, and affordable, and we’re seeking students who are driven to succeed. wgu.edu/maxpc

maximumpc.com MAR 2014 MAXIMUMPC 19

Cheapskate’s Guide

22 MAXIMUMPC MAR 2014 maximumpc.com The By the Maximum PC staff, Ben Kim, Alex Castle, and David Murphy Cheapskate’s Guide to Power Computing

How to save lots of money without sacrificing quality, performance, or features

Our Cheapskate’s Guide has become an annual installment in the magazine, because for most of us working stiffs, the ability to stretch a dollar and get more for less is always relevant. For some of us, it means that our love of technology and all its amazing uses won’t get in the way of us paying the rent or putting new Crocs on our kids’ feet. For others, saving money is more a matter of personal pride—the result of knowing the ins and outs of getting a good deal. Only suckers pay the sticker price! Whatever motivates your cheapskate tendencies, we say embrace them, and this year we offer our support in the form of tips for savvy shopping, guidance on making wise hardware purchases, pointers to killer deals in digital entertainment, and a whole lot more. Just don’t spend your savings foolishly!

maximumpc.com MAR 2014 MAXIMUMPC 23 Cheapskate’s Guide Get the Most from the Hardware You Own Before you spend money on an upgrade, make sure you’ve milked your hardware for all it’s worth

Overclock Your CPU they are just as awesome in a laptop as they are in a desktop. Get Overclocking your CPU can be as easy as ticking a box in your BIOS, one today and your life will change. and it can open up decent performance gains that are achievable with a relatively inexpensive aftermarket cooler such as the $35 Hyper Trim Your Existing SSD Often 212 Evo from Cooler Master. Most Intel boards are multiplier locked, The Trim command for Windows is sent to your SSD when it’s idle, but you can still adjust the Turbo clock and/or the base clock quite telling the drive that it’s OK to permanently delete files marked as easily in the BIOS. Be careful though, as most modern CPUs will top garbage, so that the next time data needs to be written to a block it out at just a bit above 4GHz due to cooling and voltage constraints. can take place without the aforementioned deletion delaying the pro- We’ve gone up to 4.2GHz or so on air and a bit higher on water, but cess. Imagine if every time you had to write to a block, the controller that’s the ceiling these days unless you’re willing to shell out a mint had to perform a delete operation first! Performance would suck, for an Extreme processor from Intel or a 5GHz part from AMD, and which is why Trim exists. But here’s the problem: If your SSD holds a custom water loop to cool either. Keep in mind, however, that it’s your OS, it may rarely be in “idle” mode, and nobody knows when the doubtful you’re being held back by your CPU unless you are doing Trim command actually runs. So, do your drive a favor and manually intense multithreaded video encoding. Trim it. In Windows 8 it can be done via the Tools menu (under the drive’s Properties) by punching the Optimize button. Older OSes don’t Overclock Your GPU offer this feature, though, so you’ll need a third-party tool provided Overclocking your GPU will provide some benefits, but keep in mind by your drive manufacturer. We know that the software available for we’re talking about a 5–10 percent improvement, typically, which Intel and Samsung drives supports this, but we’re not aware of any might not be enough to overcome your particular frame-rate defi- other free tool that lets you do it on drives of other brands. ciency. In some cases you will see a 20 percent boost, but that’s not guaranteed. The cheapest way to get an FPS boost is always to just buy a second GPU for CrossFire or SLI, because, though scaling isn’t perfect, you should be able to see performance improve by 75–80 percent. Also, by the time you add a second card, whatever card you already own is typically much cheaper, making this the best-bang- for-your-buck upgrade you can perform.

Some SSDs include software that lets you manually Trim your drive—a handy feature for those on older OSes.

Reinstall Windows Nothing runs faster, not even a Kenyan, than a fresh install of Windows. It’s true that the arrival of SSDs has negated this ef - fect somewhat, but in our experience, a squeaky-clean install is noticeably perkier than a thrashed and litter-strewn 2-year- old installation. We know most of you pride yourselves on your years of uptime, but there comes a time when too many weird and unexplainable phenomena (updates not working, general EVGA PrecisionX makes it easy to overclock your GPU, examine slowness, etc.) will require you to throw up your hands and start temps and voltages, and more. over. It’s nothing to be ashamed of, and your new OS’s snappy performance will make you feel better in the end. M ove to an SSD We’ve said it before, and we’ll say it again with no hyperbole. Mov- Add RAM—to a point ing to an SSD is one of the best PC upgrades in the history of man- If you’re using less than 8GB of RAM there’s a very real chance kind. Whereas upgrading other subsystems like RAM, CPU, and your system is using almost all of it from time to time, if you’re motherboard oftentimes leads to small and imperceptible perfor- like us: a gnarly multitasker. Your OS will take a few gigs right off mance gains, an SSD upgrade is like hitting your PC with nitrous, the bat, and browser tabs can eat another gig; open Photoshop and its effects are immediate, system-wide, and like night-and-day and it’s all over but the crying. We don’t say this often, but if you compared to a spinning hard drive. Your PC will boot in half the only have 4GB of RAM, double it pronto. If you have some leftover time, programs will launch instantly, and there’s no more waiting Christmas money, treat yourself to 16GB just to be safe. for the platters to spin up or for the drive’s read heads to find your data. SSDs also emit no heat or noise, and with no moving parts

24 MAXIMUMPC MAR 2014 maximumpc.com Make Realistic Purchases Don’t buy more performance than you need

We’ll admit we’re guilty of pushing a Maximum PC worldview, but we also advocate upgrades that will actually make a difference in your day-to-day computing rather than just looking good in a A badass PSU forum signature. Here are the most often abused upgrade paths— can be overkill, be sure to steer clear of them. even for a high- end build. PSU Chassis You can run dual GTX 680s and nine hard drives off a 600W PSU, and A full-tower looks good IRL and in a forum signature, but can be a we know because we’ve done it. When buying a PSU, use an online massive waste of money and space unless you’re water-cooling. calculator to tabulate how much power your system will actually need Otherwise you get a whole lot of real estate that goes unused. If instead of just buying an 850-or-higher wattage PSU. That said, don’t that’s your bag, we get it; we like a roomy interior, too. But these buy a no-name unit. Quality and reputation are important here. cases cost more than twice what a generous mid-tower will set you back, and we’d prefer to put that cash into a GPU or SSD. Multi-core and/or Hyper-Threaded CPU Everyone loves the idea of an eight- or 12-core CPU, but the real - RAM ity is, unless you’re rendering 3D models or doing hardcore video Most home users will get by just fine with 8GB, and extreme photo work, most of the applications you use will never touch those ex- and video editors might need 16GB or 32GB in really extreme situ- tra cores, so don’t waste your money on them. The same goes for ations. Among the Maximum PC staffers, 8GB or 16GB is the norm, Hyper-Threading, which is virtual CPU cores—most apps don’t and we have never had a need for more than that. Even amateur even know they exist. In our testing, gaming performance actually photographers and videographers will be fine with 16GB. Over- dropped with Hyper-Threading enabled, and the only apps that clocked RAM is only beneficial in certain applications and can help improved by adding cores were Adobe Premiere, HandBrake, and with CPU overclocking, but for average use and a regular diet of other apps of that nature. gaming, stick with DDR3/1600 and you’ll be just fine. Proceed with Caution Your name is Mark and the store knows it

Most wireless The only thing we’d really even consider buying at the store with a companies’ “kit” new phone purchase is the case. That’s because new phones, tab- chargers are lets, and other mobile items are scientifically proven to be subject generic junk. to additional gravitational pull the first month you own them (in other words, you’re sure to drop it the day before your case arrives from Amazon).

The Fancy Cable You need the braided HDMI cables with your HDTV, receiver, or what not, right? No, you don’t. The braids do look beautiful, but nine out of 10 times, it’s just a way to charge you $35 for a cable that would otherwise be $10 or less. Shoot, some big box stores probably make more money on store-branded cables than they do on their other merchandise. As much as we all wish the braided Super Cable did something special, it doesn’t.

When you buy a new device your emotions run high and your ability The Extended Warranty to think straight is impaired. That’s when the vultures strike. But Most folks know this, but it doesn’t hurt to repeat it: Extended our advice is to just say no to these shiny extras. warranties are like gambling and the house always wins. Those extended warranties are pure gravy to the store, which knows that The New Phone Kit Bundle your hardware is 97 percent unlikely to ever fail within the war- These kits typically include a generic, low-output car charger, ge- ranty period. That’s why the stores all push them. For most of us, neric screen protector, mediocre headset, and a screen protector. it’s better to just roll the dice.

maximumpc.com MAR 2014 MAXIMUMPC 25 Cheapskate’s Guide Smart Shopping Strategies Saving your pennies when purchasing online is easier than you might think A little bit of time and effort can save you a not-so-insignificant amount of cash when you’re shopping online. Trust us. The last time we went shopping for pants, for example, a quick online scan for promo codes helped us to double-stack savings—turning a measly 20 percent discount into a much more pleasing 65 percent discount (and allowing us to buy two pairs instead of one!). We’re not talking rocket science here, just perseverance. And of course, it pays to know all the most effective techniques.

Bookmark the Best Deal Sites The web is full of “deal sites”—as in, giant listings of items that have either been found by the site itself or posted by its visitors. These items are typically discounted from their regular retail Signing up for e-newsletters might not seem like a hot tip, but Newegg’s price any number of different ways, from standard sales that often delivers promos and prices you simply won’t find listed elsewhere. sleuths have stumbled across, to creative uses of promotional codes and other offers, to the leaking of special URLs reserved FatWallet While we’re a bit more keen on SlickDeals’s listings, for a vendor’s “elite” shoppers. we find the FatWallet forums to be irresistible. Promo codes, So, which are some of the best resources? coupon codes, and helpful advice—especially for travel and finance—make this site’s giant community worth checking out. SlickDeals The alpha and omega of deal sites, this super- The bonus cashback you can get for listed deals is the icing on the popular site is a great, general resource for deals spanning all cake. www.fatwallet.com kinds of categories. You can even have the site email you when new deals pop up for certain products you’re interested in. www. Leverage Coupon Codes slickdeals.net Our first stop when shopping is a handy little site called Retail- MeNot (www.retailmenot.com), a great place to quickly find active CheapAssGamer If you want to narrow your search to video promo codes for a variety of online shopping sites. If that doesn’t games, then CAG (as it’s affectionately known) is where you’ll find great turn up results, we look to other sites like Coupon Predator (www. gaming deals and a vibrant community. www.cheapassgamer.com couponpredator.com), Google, and even a Twitter search to see what’s out there. That might sound primitive, but it works. Reddit Yes, there are Reddits for everything, it seems. Hit up Beyond that, browser extensions like Honey or Coupons at /r/deals, /r/dealsreddit, and /r/gamedeals for your general and Checkout will automatically search for promo codes when you go gaming-related purchases; /r/coupons if you’re keen on promos; to make a purchase. Unfortunately, they might also pull in cou- and /r/freebies for, well, just that. And of course, don’t forget /r/ pons for larger retail sites that have absolutely nothing to do with buildapcsales. www.reddit.com what you’re buying (a bit of a tease). And don’t forget newsletters! Newegg is a great example of a DealNews Second verse, same as the first. This site, like Slick- site that’ll often stuff interesting deals into the emails it blasts Deals, dishes out a whole ton of bargains across an equally large your way, as is TigerDirect (and Mwave, Directron, etc.). All of the number of categories. There’s no forum, just straight-up savings. various Groupon-like sites—LivingSocial, Amazon Local, Travel- www.dealnews.com zoo, to name a few—are also worth checking out for deals in cat- egories beyond electronics. No matter what you sign up for, however, we recommend that you fire up a Gmail account and use the ol’ trick of adding a plus symbol and extra characters to your email address for newslet- ter purposes (so, [email protected] instead of Tom@ maximumpc.com). Your email will still route to the same location, but you’ll have a much stronger ability to filter the bounty of mes- sages you’ll receive.

Browser Plugins for Bargain Shopping It’s always great when your web browser itself can do your deal hunting. Of course, you’re going to have to install an extension or two to transform Chrome or Firefox into a shopping machine. One of our favorites is (oddly) called Camelcamelcamel; it ties into the website of the same name, and tracks the prices of things you’re looking to purchase on Amazon or Bestbuy.com. (It used to work on Newegg as well, but doesn’t as of this article’s writing). The site Deals.woot.com is another great example of a community- The extensions Priceblink and Invisible Hand are also worth hav - driven deal aggregator; we tend to like sites that have a bit of a ing in your back pocket, as they’ll automatically notify you if they competitive element, as it usually leads to better deals!

26 MAXIMUMPC MAR 2014 maximumpc.com

Cheapskate’s Guide

can find a lower price for items you’re looking at on a particular retailer’s website. If you’re a huge Amazon fan, you can grab the company’s “Add to Wish List” extension. When you’re shopping anywhere else, simply click the little button in your browser to automatically add whatever you’re looking at to your Amazon Wish List (presumably, to purchase later with your fancy Amazon Prime account). While it’s not a browser extension, we just have to mention the web app Slice—sign up for the free service, and you’ll be able to get notifications on your smartphone when your packages have shipped and when they’re delivered!

RefurbMe is a handy site for finding refurbished Apple products for cheap. The tracking element is especially useful, given how prod- ucts arrive and disappear from Apple’s refurb site.

The Refurbished Option One great way to save cash on your major PC purchases is to go refurb; specifically, items that the manufacturer has received and fixed up (or has decided are eligible for a discounted sale). Perhaps the exterior of the laptop is a wee bit scuffed—you might decide you can live with that for a $300 discount. Hate all you want, but Apple does a great job of testing and Camelcamelcamel does a great job of providing a bit of historical fixing its refurbished goods, even going so far as to offer a one- context for official and third-party Amazon prices. year limited warranty and full return support as if the item were purchased brand-new. Dell and HP also offer pretty strong war - P rice Matching ranty and return policies, as does Newegg, but you’ll definitely It’s no secret that you can often score much better deals with a want to check that whichever store you’re looking to buy refurb bit of online sleuthing than you can in a brick-and-mortar store. from gives you a plethora of return options, to be safe. Amazon, What if you want your brand-new video game today, however, in- for example, might offer a ton of options for buying used, but you stead of having to wait for it to ship out from some random online might be bound by the stricter return policy of an individual sell - retailer? er. Caveat emptor. Here’s the catch: While a number of retail chains like Staples, We didn’t find any strong, comprehensive sites that track refurb Best Buy, Target, and Wal-Mart (to name a few) will price-match sales across a number of different manufacturers and retailers, against online entities like Amazon, their policies can all differ other than the Apple-centric RefurbMe (www.refurb.me). regarding specifics. Best Buy, for example, limits the number of sites it’ll consider for price matching, and any items that are Shi pping Services subject to “deal of the day” specials (or the like) don’t apply— If you’re a junkie for a particular retail site—Amazon or Newegg thus rendering price matching a bit moot. spring to mind—then it might be worth your while to sign up for Timing varies with the brick-and-mortar stores, as well. Best that site’s shipping service, should it offer one. Amazon Prime Buy, for example, needs to know the lower price you’re trying to gives you “free” two-day shipping for an annual fee; Newegg uses match when you go to purchase an item. Target, however, gives Shoprunner (also $79 a year), which is a similar service that cov - you a seven-day window from the point of purchase to find a low- ers a large number of participating stores simultaneously. er price from a slim list of online retailers. If you don’t want to pay the annual fee, but still want to take Our advice? Stick to the deal sites we’ve previously listed; advantage of the services for a particular large purchase or shop- trying to play the price-matching game is more trouble than it’s ping spree, you can always sign up for each site’s 30-day trial (so worth. long as you remember to cancel it before the month is up!) Or you can always check out FreeShipping.org to see if you can get your purchases sent gratis via a code or deal. FreeShipping.org The Amazon Tax Hack is one-half ship- ping codes, one- A good online deal can be soured when you’re reminded that you half deals, but defi- have to pay sales tax at the checkout page. There’s a way around nitely worth a stop this on Amazon, however. For eligible items, if you buy through if you just can’t third-party vendors that have their orders “Fulfilled by Amazon” figure out a way to then you can skirt around Uncle Sam. These items will actually avoid expensive be shipped from Amazon’s warehouse and are also eligible for shipping charges. free two-day shipping under Amazon Prime. Of course, do make a mental note to yourself to pay these back taxes at the end of the year, OK?

28 MAXIMUMPC MAR 2014 maximumpc.com

Cheapskate’s Guide Best Practices for Buying Used Gear Or how not to get burned Buying a Used Phone Buying a used smartphone is an easy way to save hundreds of dollars. The two big places to buy phones and tablets today are eBay and Craigslist. eBay is problematic for picky buyers, as you can’t touch before purchasing. You instead have to rely on the descriptions. If we had to buy a phone on eBay and wanted to improve our chances of being satisfied, we’d stick with vendors who sell dozens or hundreds of phones. These vendors are more concerned with maintaining a reputation, so if you have prob- lems with a phone, returning it shouldn’t be a problem. As al- ways though, read the fine print on returns and refunds before you make a bid. If you prefer the face-to-face interaction of Craigslist, there are a few tips you should follow. First, for security’s sake, meet in a public place such as a café and never go to a second loca - tion with the seller because they “forgot the charger.” (Right, follow them outside with $400 cash in your pocket!). If you’re re- ally leery, ask them to meet you in the lobby of a nearby police station. This applies to any face-to-face transaction, of course. Kick the tires first! On any phone, the common failure points are headphone jack and charger port. Bring your own ear buds, Some vendors only care if a product is within a warranty period, not plug them in, and put light pressure on the cord where it plugs who bought it. in while playing audio to see if it cuts out. If it does, the port may be damaged. Likewise, plug the phone into the wall and see if the phone will show that it’s charging while putting light pressure on switches to make sure they engage and disengage, and check the cord from different angles. If it loses connection at a certain that there are no issues with the touchscreen’s digitizer by test - angle, the charging port may be damaged. ing the corners in particular, since they’re prone to stress. Check Check the phone’s moisture indicators—usually on the bat - the phone’s electronic serial number, or ESN, and make sure it’s tery or inside the phone or hidden inside the headphone jack or not on your carrier’s blocked list. Carefully examine the chassis card slot. You may need a magnifying glass and flashlight. Most and screen alignment too, as well as the screws that hold the turn dark red or purple after they’ve been exposed to moisture. phone together. If the parts seem out of alignment, or the tamper Also function-check all of the phone’s physical buttons and seal is simply gone, there’s a good chance the “new” phone has been opened up. These same rules apply to tablets. The only other test we’d do with a tablet is to try to twist the tablet by the corners very gently. This should exert pressure on the panel and digitizer, and could reveal whether there’s a loose connection from being dropped one time too many. We’d also be a bit more careful about checking the tablet’s screen, so pull up a paint program and view pages of different solid colors to look for dead pixels.

Buying PC Parts Buying used PC parts can be a bit trickier. If you’re buying a used GeForce Titan for $500, you certainly can’t test it in Starbucks. The good news is that most PC parts tend to be pretty resilient. Dead CPUs and GPUs are rare. Some PC parts vendors are very good about honoring warranties regardless of who originally bought the parts, but you’ll want to verify this beforehand. Hard- drive vendors, for example, typically don’t care who bought the drive, as warranties typically start from date of manufacture. Frankly, buying PC parts face-to-face, where you can’t power them up and test them is almost sketchier than buying from a person on eBay, where the seller is likely to want to protect their reputation, or in a worse-case scenario, eBay itself can inter- These are identical batteries but the one with the red moisture cede in a purchasing dispute. indicator has gone through the washer.

30 MAXIMUMPC MAR 2014 maximumpc.com

Cheapskate’s Guide Stream Everything: Movies, Music, TV, and More Cutting the cable has never been easier

Is there anything worse than paying big bucks for a monthly cable subscription and an assortment of Blu-rays? If you have a high-speed Internet connection, you don’t need to anymore. There’s never been a better time to consider cutting the cable, with streaming websites galore and services available for pretty much everything.

Movies It’s a great time to be a movie lover. Between Netflix, Amazon Instant Video, Crackle, and Hulu, there are loads of options to choose from. Netflix is still the frontrunner, with its $7.99-per-month streaming Netflix remains the force to be reckoned with when it comes to plan, huge library with 720p and 1080p “Super HD” video, 5.1 sur- streaming commercial content. round sound, and support for nearly every modern device—Roku, Chromecast, mobile phones, and more. Compare that to Amazon exact same price (but unencumbered by DRM). If music exploration’s Prime Instant Video, which gives Amazon Prime members access to your thing, both NoiseTrade (www.noisetrade.com) and the Free a library of some 40,000 movies and TV episodes as well as some à Music Archive (www.freemusicarchive.org) offer free songs from la carte offerings. smaller artists.

TV Books If you need the latest TV episodes, Hulu’s your best bet. Recent If you don’t want to make regular trips to your local library, there episodes from most networks are available for free on your PC and are some cheapskate alternatives. Most public libraries offer online upgrading to the $7.99/month Hulu Plus subscription gives you HD checkout of e-books and audio books. How it works largely depends streams, expanded device support, and access to Hulu’s backlog. on your local library, but it’s a great option if you’re looking for recent Netflix and Amazon Instant Video both also include a pretty large books. If you don’t have a problem reading classics, Project Guten- selection of TV shows. Recent episodes aren’t always available, but berg (www.gutenberg.org) has been around for a long time, collect- it’s hard to beat paying $7.99 a month for both TV and movies. ing public domain books and making them available for free. There’s also the Kindle Owners’ Lending Library, which gives Amazon Prime Music subscribers the chance to borrow one e-book per month from a Our top pick is still Spotify. With its massive library of ad-support- growing selection of books. ed music, it’s the best option for on-demand music streaming. Pay $4.99/month and all the ads are stripped away. Pay $9.99/month and Sports you get mobile access with offline listening and “Extreme” audio Anyone who’s ever tried to cut the cord knows that sports has always quality (320Kb/s). been the sticking point. Unfortunately, not much has changed, and Live radio and jukebox fans will love iHeartRadio. It’s a service the easiest way to get your sports fix is to stick with cable or hook up that gives you access to more than 1,500 live radio stations across a TV tuner for local broadcasts. the country. It also lets you create customized radio stations that pull If you’re not a regular ESPN or ESPN 2 watcher, you might be able from iHeartRadio’s music library of over 15 million songs. iTunes Ra- to get by with paid subscriptions to the leagues that you care about dio is a newer alternative, but the lack of Android support is pretty most. All of the major sports leagues offer some sort of subscrip- unforgivable. tion—with prices as high as $200. The passes usually last for the Looking to actually purchase songs? Check the prices on Amazon entire season, but are sometimes gimped by restrictions that might MP3—chances are good that they’re cheaper than iTunes if not the make local games or even playoff games unavailable.

Chromecast: The Poor Man’s Smart TV

The Chromecast is Google’s $35 Roku and Apple TV competi - with the ease-of-use and accessibility of either the Roku or tor. Plug the 3-inch device into an HDMI port on your TV— the Apple TV, but at only $35 it’s hard to argue with super - plus a USB port for power—and you can stream content from simple streaming. Chromecast-enabled apps on your PC, phone, or tablet , and Since the Chromecast can only be used as a secondary de - through Chrome itself. Since it launched in July, Google’s vice, it’s safe to say that it’s not a real threat to dedicated been pushing for further Chromecast development. Some of digital media receivers. Having to reach for your phone or that has finally paid off with more than a few services now laptop to peruse your Netflix queue isn’t nearly as convenient touting official support. Hulu, Pandora, HBO G o, Plex, and as pressing play on a Roku remote. Google’s continued focus more have joined Netflix and Google Play with compatible on Chromecast is a good sign and the future of the Chrome - apps. It’s still got a ways to go before it can really compete cast isn’t as bleak as it once was.

32 MAXIMUMPC MAR 2014 maximumpc.com Getting XBMC Up and Running Open-source media-center goodness for free

If you’re looking for a front end for your media center, look no further than XBMC. It’s completely free, installing it is a cinch, and a massive library of user-created add-ons means that plenty of your favorite services are probably supported.

DOWNLOAD AND INSTALL XBMC Download XBMC (www.xbmc. INSTALL ADD-ONS Add-ons are the lifeblood of org) for the operating system you’re running (image A) and in- XBMC. Most of them are easy installs—go to System 1 stall it. You’ve also got the option of installing XBMCbuntu—a 4 > Settings > Add-ons > Get Add-ons > All Add-ons and stand-alone OS running on Linux. select from any of the available categories to search through the official XBMC repository. Pick an add-on and click Install. A Some beta add-ons aren’t available without a bit of tinker- ing. We recommend NetfliXBMC, Spotimc, and the unofficial Hulu add-on to start with. Installing NetfliXBMC is a bit of a chore. First, download AddOnScripterDE’s repository (http://bit.ly/NetfliXBMC). Then go to Settings > Add-ons > Install from zip file and select the zip file you downloaded. Now when you click Get Add-ons, you should see AddOnScripterDE’s Beta Repo as an option. Select it, head into Video Add-ons, and install NetfliXBMC. Once it’s installed, right-click NetfliXBMC, go to Add-on settings (im- age D), and enter in your Netflix account information. While you’re in the settings menu, click the Advanced tab and select IExplorer under Win Browser. If you’ve done everything right, you should be able to access Netflix and watch videos. The process is a bit simpler for BlueCop’s Hulu add-on and Spotimc. To get access to Hulu, download BlueCop’s reposito- ry (http://bit.ly/HuluXBMC) and install it by selecting the repo. Spotimc (http://bit.ly/Spotimc), the unofficial Spotify add-on, Update YOUR AUDIO AND VIDEO SETTINGS Chances are is even easier to install. All you have to do is download and good that XBMC will pick the right resolution for your set- directly install the zip file. up, but make sure by going to System > Settings > Video 2 D output and checking the Resolution option. While you’re in the settings menu, check the Audio output tab to fine- tune your audio settings (image B).

B

MAKE IT LOOK NICE XBMC looks fine the first time you start it up, but there’s more than a few alter- 5 nate skins available. Go to System > Settings > Ap- pearance > Skin > Get More to get access to them. We rec- IMPORT YOUR LOCAL CONTENT A media center is pretty ommend Aeon Nox, Aeon MQ 5 (image E), and re-Touched worthless without any media. Fortunately, importing con- if you’re running XBMC on a device with a touchscreen. tent into XBMC is ridiculously easy. Select the Video or 3 E Music tab and click Add Source. Browse to where you keep your content, click the folder, and give it a name (image C).

C

maximumpc.com MAR 2014 MAXIMUMPC 33 Cheapskate’s Guide How to Save on Software Get cheap or free software without losing out

Antivirus toshop Elements (www.adobe.com) offers all the photo correction Computer security is not an area where you want to cut corners, options a non-expert photographer needs with a very user-friendly but these days you can get all of your antivirus needs covered with- interface for $60. Alternatively, Adobe’s new subscription options al- out spending much at all. For many users, the days of shelling out low you to “rent” Photoshop by the month for $30. big bucks for a yearly subscription AV suite are over—Microsoft provides formidable built-in protection in the form of Windows De- Office Apps fender, a powerful free antivirus program included in Windows 8. Microsoft Office has a death grip on the commercial office apps If you’d like even more full-featured AV, or you want to stick with market on Windows, but there are plenty of alternatives if you look the antivirus suite you already know, the best way to save money is around. If you’re able, the best solution for most folks is to simply to buy through a reseller. A simple Amazon search for Kaspersky move your documents cloud-side, with Google Apps (https://drive. or Norton returns dozens of reputable sellers offering the latest google.com). The browser-based word processor, spreadsheet, and versions of these suites for 50 percent off retail price. presentation software are all powerful and user-friendly, and you can access your files from any computer or smartphone. Image Editor If you prefer a more traditional software suite, the open-source Even if you don’t consider photography a hobby, you should know alternative is Libre Office www.libreoffice.org( ), a descendant of the a little bit about photo editing. A quick pass through the right soft- popular Open Office. It’s a big download, but Libre Office has all the ware can take even the most amateurish photos and give them a features of Microsoft Office, and can open and save files with the little extra pop. There’s plenty of ways to do this without spending widely used Office file extensions. money, depending on your needs. If you just want to occasionally spruce up pictures with fea- Operating System tures like contrast and color adjustment, red-eye reduction, and When it’s time to really make the switch to free software, you’ve got cropping, you may not need to download anything at all. Popu- to start from the ground up—you’ve got to switch to a free operat- lar photo organization tools Flickr (www.flickr.com) and Picasa ing system. The subject of making the switch to Linux is too broad to (http://picasa.google.com) both come with built-in tools that let fit into a paragraph or two, but we’ll tell you how to get started. We you do all that for free. recommend Mint, a very beginner-friendly Linux distro that’s based For cheapskates that want the power of a full photo-editing suite on Ubuntu. Ubuntu (www.ubuntu.com) is also a great choice, but the for free, the answer is (as always) Gimp (www.gimp.org). The for- Mint GUI will be slightly more intuitive for people used to Windows. midable open-source editor can do almost everything Photoshop Head to www.linuxmint.com to download the latest version of the can, including automatic image adjustments, batch processing, and OS, and then click over to the Documentation tab. The guide is pretty manual photo correction (see our Gimp how-to on page 64). Finally, long, but doesn’t involve anything that will be difficult for a moder- consider that Photoshop itself isn’t as expensive as it once was. Pho- ately experienced computer user.

Video Encoding/Playback When it comes to playing video content, the best free option is also the best option, period. Download VLC (www.videolan.org), a free media player that offers playback for just about any file type or codec under the sun. If you want to go a step further and transcode videos from one format to another, the software you’re looking for is Hand- Brake (http://handbrake.fr), a free utility that makes it easy to create Windows Defender: The best thing to happen to security-minded video files perfectly suited for any device. cheapskates.

Student, Government, and Company Discounts

One thing to keep in mind when hunting for cheap software is that versions of Windows and Office are 10 percent off for students, for you might be able to get deeper discounts through your employer instance, and Adobe offers a huge 40 percent educational discount or school. If you work for the government or military, for instance, on its pricey software. Hardware is also cheaper if you have an edu- you could be eligible for a program that allows you to download Mi - cational email address, with Apple and Dell offering substantial sav- crosoft Office for just $10. If you work for a big company, you might ings on laptops for students. The main takeaway here is that if you’re be able to get bulk-priced software for home use, as well. We can’t a student, never buy anything online without first searching to see if say what any particular employer offers, of course, so your best bet a discount is available. is to get in contact with your IT department, and ask if they offer any Note that most educational discounts are also available to school discount programs for at-home use. faculty, so if you or someone in your family is a teacher you can cash What’s the one group that companies love the most? Students. in on these deals. Finally, college students should remember that College students and kids are broke now, but could someday be universities are big organizations, too, and may have their own bulk- valuable customers, so companies like Microsoft, Dell, and Apple rate deals on software. Talk to your campus technology department try to earn their favor with discounts on just about everything. All for more info.

34 MAXIMUMPC MAR 2014 maximumpc.com

Cheapskate’s Guide Best Bang-for-the-Buck Games These deals are so good it’s almost a crime to pass them up

Counter-Strike: Fallout: New Vegas Ultimate generated surroundings, and be charmed by Global Offensive Edition the 16-bit art style. This was still in “Early CS:GO takes the challenge and balance Developed by some of the people who made Access” mode at press time, so gameplay of the original game and gives it a big the original Fallout games, FNV brings a meat- was still evolving. Your mileage may vary. $8, face-lift and the most accessibility the ier story and lighter tone than Fallout 3, and it www.gnomoria.com moves us from the DC wasteland to the South- western desert. Combined with mods and sto- L egend of Grimrock ry DLCs, you could easily lose a hundred hours This first-person dungeon crawler hearkens to this game. $20, fallout.bethsoft.com back to old-school titles like Eye of the Be- holder, but with updated graphics and sound. FTL: Faster than Light Lots of puzzles and secrets lay before you as This top-down sci-fi rogue-like has you hur- you attempt to escape the prison that you have tling through dangerous stretches of un- been unjustly thrown into. Steam provides known space as you evade a fleet of ships Workshop support, and the community has bent on eliminating the last remnants of a put together hours of additional levels, en- failed rebellion. Highly tactical and random, emies, and items. $15, www.grimrock.net franchise has ever seen. You can play it you increase your odds of survival through at a variety of skill levels and still have unlocking different ship types and gathering Monaco: What’s Yours Is Mine fun—even against some decent bots. The the right collection of crew and weaponry. A This top-down, team-based game is about game will also randomly reward you with big free update may be out by the time you breaking into banks, museums, and man- crates that contain cosmetic upgrades for read this, too. $10, www.ftlgame.com sions. You can play alone or online and choose your weapons and clothing. $15, www. from a variety of character classes, like hack- counter-strike.net Gnomoria er, locksmith, or pickpocket. It’s received a This sandbox village-management game is couple of large, free updates and has Work- Deus Ex: Human Revolution - kinder, gentler Dwarf Fortress. Build your shop support to greatly increase the amount Director’s Cut town into a city and defend it from enemies, of content. $15, www.monacoismine.com This sci-fi stealth-action-RPG hybrid craft a slew of items, explore your randomly maintains the cynical tone, grand scale, Spelunky and moral quandaries of the original In this charming, side-scrolling indie plat- game, while pushing forward with triple-A former, death is permanent but usually production values, including an excellent educational and entertaining. Randomly gen- soundtrack by composer Michael McCann. erated levels, full destructibility, content un- With latitude for stealthy, guns-blazing, locks, local co-op, and daily challenges await and completely non-lethal approaches, the patient and adventurous. It also has full the game rewards multiple playthroughs. gamepad support and performs well on older $20, www.deusex.com PCs. $15, www.spelunkyworld.com

How to Be a Frugal Fragger

Humble Store In addition to weekly and semi-monthly bundle sales, they’re tuned to be playable out-of-the-box on a modern OS. GOG the Humble Bundle guys now have a 24/7 storefront with daily deals. frequently bundles soundtracks, wallpaper, and artwork with each They reportedly take a smaller cut than Steam, and they frequently game. It is owned by CD Projekt Red, the makers of the Witcher match Steam’s sale price, so it’s a good place to check before mak- games. www.gog.com ing your purchase. They still sell Steam keys, along with DRM-free downloads and sometimes Android versions. Ten percent of all pro- Amazon Amazon is another good place to check, because it fre- ceeds go to charity. www.humblebundle.com/store quently offer credits towards future game purchases, and you can get credit cards that award bonus points for shopping there (such as Cheapshark This is one of the better sale aggregators on the web, Amazon’s owned branded Visa card, which currently gives you a $30 pulling prices from a dozen different reputable online stores. You credit if you’re approved). And with its buying power, you’ll some- can specify a price range and sort by multiple criteria, like release times find better sale prices than anywhere else. www.amazon.com date, Metacritic score, and title, and you can sign up for price alerts, too. www.cheapshark.com Vendor Bundles Nvidia and AMD have been bundling a lot of games with their cards lately, but sometimes the buyer already owns them GOG.com If you don’t want to deal with DRM, GOG.com is your new or just isn’t interested. This is where eBay comes in. Since the games best friend. Its library of games also stretches back to the DOS came free of charge, resell prices are customarily lower than retail. days (Wing Commander, Master of Orion, Ultima Underworld), but www.ebay.com

36 MAXIMUMPC MAR 2014 maximumpc.com Build a $600 PC You don’t need to be a Bitcoin Baron to afford a decent PC

In the Blueprints section of our mag, we have a “budget” template in every other issue that’s priced between $750 and $800. But this is the Cheapskate’s Guide, baby, so we crank up your savings to 11. There will be some unavoidable casualties along the way, but we try to make quality not be one of them. This build won’t have an optical drive, or much RAM, or anything fancy, really. But it’ll play your games and tweet your Facebooks ’til the break of dawn.

CPU AMD FX-6300 but its power supplies are worth a men- AMD is still the king of the budget build, tion, as well. With its two 8-pin PCI Ex - and its hexa-core FX-6300 fits right in press power cables, this 500-watt unit with a compelling combo of price and per- should handle pretty much any single- formance. Its clock multiplier is also un- GPU video card; six SATA power cables will locked, if you want to squeeze out some handle a load of internal storage devices; extra performance (but we’d recommend and its “80+ Bronze” rating indicates good an aftermarket CPU cooler for that). energy efficiency. $110, www.amd.com $45, www.evga.com

Motherboard Graphics MSI 970A-G46 Gigabyte Radeon R7 260X 2GB This board strikes a very good balance AMD has changed the naming convention between cost and performance. It’s about for its video cards; the performance of the cheapest you’ll find that has heatsinks this card comes in a little under a Radeon around the CPU tray, which you need to get HD 7850, or Nvidia’s GeForce GTX 650 Ti a decent, stable overclock. All six SATA Boost. We bumped the VRAM from 1GB ports are rated for up to 6Gb/s, and it has to 2GB to better handle some of the fancy several USB 3.0 ports on the back. games coming out in 2014. The 260X is $80, www.msi.com not rocket-fueled, but it will make pretty much everything playable. Total Price: $608 Memory $140, www.gigabyte.us When we built our last Cheapskate rig 18 Crucial Ballistix Sport 4GB months ago, it actually wasn’t hugely dif- (1x 4GB) DDR3/1600 Hard Drive ferent. We still have 4GB of system RAM, We’ve seen a spike in system RAM prices Seagate Barracuda 1TB an AMD board using the 970 chipset, a 1TB ever since manufacturers started switch- 7,200rpm Seagate drive, and a basic mid-tower and ing to making chips for mobile devices, so We’d love to be able to put a solid-state in power supply. Upgrading the CPU from a we’re compelled to go with one stick of here, since they perform extremely fast Phenom II X4 965 was sorely needed, since RAM to keep costs under control. (and silently), but our budget just doesn’t that chip has been around for five years $38, www.crucial.com allow for such luxuries. We opted for a now. And a Radeon HD 6850 with 1GB of 1TB mechanical hard drive instead, which VRAM isn’t going to push a lot of triple-A Case costs a fraction of a similarly sized SSD. pixels these days. These new replace- NZXo T S urce 210 You could shave costs further with a 500GB ments aren’t going to give you a night-and- It’s important to have a case that’s rigid hard drive, but you’ll get a performance hit day difference, either. This is more of an because it won’t bend out of shape during that isn’t worth the marginal savings. evolution than a revolution. shipment, and it’s not easily dented. The $60, www.seagate.com This system also has room for expan- NZXT Source 210 is about as bare-bones sion. You can put an FX-8350 in there, in - as we can recommend, below which you OS creasing your CPU cores from six to eight. start to encounter a lot of brittle plastic Microsoft Windows 8.1 OEM You can drop in a fancy video card to match and thin panels. It has just one fan and (64-bit) it, up to and including a Radeon R9 290X, no USB 3.0 ports, but you can address The Metro/Modern desktop doesn’t feel or a GeForce GTX 780. The Source 210 case that later, when you have more scratch to quite right for mouse-and-keyboard in- has a large number of fan mounts, room throw around. put, but as long as you stick to the regular for long video cards, decent cable routing, $35, www.nzxt.com desktop mode, Windows 8.1 should feel and even a vent below the power supply snappy and functional. It also has very mount. To install Windows without an opti- Power Supply good Wi-Fi and Ethernet support out of the cal drive, though, you’ll need a couple of EVGA 100-B1-0500-KR box, making initial setup smoother. extra steps. We have a guide for that, too: EVGA is mostly known for its video cards, $100, www.microsoft.com http://bit.ly/198H4GQ.

maximumpc.com MAR 2014 MAXIMUMPC 37

Keyboard Roundup KEYs TO VICTORY

40 MAXIMUMPC MAR 2014 maximumpc.com KEYs TO VICTORY

Having the right keyboard can make all the difference in games. We test six of the latest premium planks By Alex Castle

A great gaming keyboard is more than just a periph - eral. It’s a tool that can boost your productivity, give you a major competitive advantage, and make your computing time more comfortable and more fun. It’s also a way to express yourself—with the dozens of keyboards on the market, picking the right one says a lot about what kind of gamer you are, and what you find important. Hell, if you’re like a lot of gamers, a top-notch gaming keyboard might well be the prettiest thing in your computer room. So, if you’re still using an old, worn-out plank, this is a great time to think about upgrading. There have never been more high-quality keyboards on the mar - ket, so you’ll have tons to choose from. Unfortunately, that also means that picking the keyboard that’s right for you is harder than it’s ever been. To make things a little easier, we’ve put together a roundup of six high-end keyboards released over the last six months. We’ve put each one through our rigor - ous keyboard testing procedures, and given them ver - dicts based on performance, build quality, and feature set. Read on for a glimpse of the state-of-the-art in gaming keyboards.

maximumpc.com MAR 2014 MAXIMUMPC 41 Keyboard Roundup

The Mech is a big mechanical keyboard, CMStorm Mech but isn't quite as sturdy as it looks. CMStorm looks to get a handle on the high-end mechanical keyboard market

The CMStorm Mech is, first of all, a great-looking keyboard. Most of the top of the keyboard is wrapped in a subtly etched aluminum plate, and the board’s geometric, asymmetrical silhouette is more imaginative than most. The aluminum plate can be removed for easy cleaning, which is a nice fea- ture, but the seven hex screws that make removal possible mar the Mech’s otherwise-excellent aesthetics. Despite the Mech’s metal-clad looks, it’s not the stur- diest keyboard in this roundup. The back side of the board, and particularly the wrist rest, are made of hollow plastic virtually identical to the other mechanical gaming keyboards that sometimes flexes and creaks under pressure. It also on the market. Fans of any variety of Cherry MX switch will be features a large handle on one side, and a detachable USB able to find a Mech that’s right for them—CMStorm offers the cable. These would be handy features for someone who takes keyboard with Red, Blue, or Brown switches. their keyboard on the road frequently, but it’s not otherwise In all, the Mech is a solid gaming keyboard, but doesn’t an especially portable keyboard. It would be nice if the handle quite live up to its top-of-the-line $160 price tag. were removable or retractable, because it adds an extra two or three inches to the Mech’s already substantial width. The software support is simple and easy to use. It allows you to customize the five dedicated macro keys, or to rebind any verdict CMStorm Mech other key on the board, and includes a flexible macro editor. Actual typing and gaming performance is top-notch and 8 $160, www.cmstorm.com

The seam down the middle of the Strike 3 is just Mad Catz STRIKE 3 for show—this keyboard's only one piece. Is a less-extravagant Strike a better deal?

The Strike 3 is the least expensive in Mad Catz’s line of high- end gaming keyboards, but it’s by no means a piece of budget hardware. If the $100 price tag doesn’t convince you of that, seeing the Strike 3 in person will. It’s designed to look like the higher-end Strike boards, which can be split into two parts and rearranged, but this one doesn’t actually come apart. Build quality is good overall, with a removable wrist-rest and a pair of USB passthroughs. The board comes in glossy black, red, and white, and features customizable backlighting. The Strike 3 isn’t mechanical, which weakens the credibility of this $100 keyboard, but Mad Catz hasn’t ignored key quality altogether. The dome switches on the Strike 3 are some of the best we’ve felt, with a crisp actuation that feels almost, but not quite, as good as a mechanical model. They definitely feel The Strike 3 is a good keyboard, but we would generally better than any of the other non-mechanical boards we tested recommend a mechanical board if you’re looking to spend for this roundup. this much. If you personally prefer non-mechanical switches, The Strike 3 features five dedicated macro keys on the right however, this would be an excellent choice. side of the board, and seven macro buttons at the top-left. The left-side buttons, unfortunately, are pretty abysmal. They’re tiny, far away from the home row, and strangely wiggly in their verdict Mad Catz Strike 3 sockets—we found it virtually impossible to hit a particular one without looking. 8 $100, www.madcatz.com

42 MAXIMUMPC MAR 2014 maximumpc.com You can prop the Apex up in the back by SteelSeries Apex replacing two of it's rubber feet. All the keys you could want, and then some

Sometimes, more is more. That seems to be the guiding prin- ciple behind the SteelSeries Apex keyboard, which comes with about as many keys as we’ve ever seen on a gaming keyboard. In addition to the standard full QWERTY layout with number pad, the Apex includes 10 macro keys and four layer keys down the left side, 12 more macro keys above the function row, and six dedicated media buttons along the right side. Even the arrow pad gets two extra diagonal keys. SteelSeries doesn’t advertise the Apex as an MMO keyboard specifically, but it’s hard to imag- ine what other application could make use of this abundance. Despite its absurd inventory of keys, the Apex doesn’t feel cluttered at all, and in fact looks quite nice. With its built-in strong contender for best keyboard in this price range. As it is, wrist rest the board is pretty enormous, but the low-profile we’d recommend it highly to those who prioritize lots of macro keys and customizable sectioned backlighting keep it looking keys and great design over maximum key responsiveness. sleek. The build quality is good, though not quite as hardy as SteelSeries’s mechanical keyboards. The Apex includes a pair of USB passthroughs, and allows for some angle customization with a pair of swappable rear feet. Our only real issue with the Apex is that it doesn’t use me- chanical keys, and even compared to other dome-switch key- verdict SteelSeries Apex boards in this roundup, like the Strike 3, the Apex’s keys feel distinctly mushy. If it had better key performance, it would be a 8 $100, http://steelseries.com

What We Look for in a Keyboard

When we review a keyboard, we look at it on three levels. The first and most important level is basic user experience— how the board feels when you use it. This includes factors like key quality and responsiveness, layout, and build quality. Ninety-nine percent of the time, the way you use your key- board comes down to those standard QWERTY keys, so we’ll take a great-feeling keyboard over a flimsy one with a zillion features any day. We would also consider a keyboard with- out enough anti-ghosting/rollover for gaming usage to have failed on this basic level. Second, we examine the board on the level of practical, value-adding features. These are what make a gaming key- and what they bring to the table. Here you’ll see us talk about board different from a more standard keyboard, and include things like backlighting, interchangeable keycaps, and paint things like macro keys, profiles, USB/audio passthroughs, jobs. These are frequently surface features, designed more the ability to rebind any key, and media controls. Of course, for showing off to other gamers than for your own use. there’s no standard rule for what’s “practical” and what’s All of this isn’t to say that we think keyboards should not, and we take into consideration that, for instance, the first be boring, just that it’s important they have their priorities five macro keys add a lot more value to the keyboard than straight. Awesome backlighting can be a great addition to a macro keys number 15-20. This is also the level where we gaming keyboard, but boards with tons of bells and whistles consider the keyboard’s software support. built into a crappy or just mediocre foundation are distress- Finally, we look at the keyboard’s less-essential features, ingly common.

maximumpc.com MAR 2014 MAXIMUMPC 43 Keyboard Roundup

LEDs in each key in the Roccat MK Pro can light up and blink Roccat Ryos Mk independently. Pro This flashy keyboard is more than just looks

Build quality on the Ryos MK Pro is outstanding. It’s all plastic, as far as we can see, but is incredibly weighty and rugged-feeling. The surface is treated with a glossy dot-ma- trix pattern that gives the Ryos a high-class look without leav- ing it as vulnerable to fingerprints as a pure-gloss keyboard. Like the last Roccat keyboard we tested, the Ryos has a non- removable integrated wrist rest. It’s comfortable (particular- ly with the back of the board elevated on sturdy-feeling sup- ports), but makes the keyboard take up an absolutely massive amount of desk space. The software support for the Ryos is fine, though not out- the whole keyboard. It’s simultaneously the most superfluous standing. The interface is a little cluttered and at times unre- and most fun new feature we’ve seen in a keyboard in years. sponsive, but it gets the job done, allowing you to customize It’s hard to say that the Ryos Mk Pro completely justifies the lighting, macros, and key binding for each profile. $170 asking price—that’s quite a bit more money than other A lot of keyboards have backlighting these days, but this very good mechanical keyboards—but it at least comes close. is the first one we’ve tested that has completely independent lights behind every key. The color can’t be changed, but you can choose which keys should light up and which shouldn’t verdict Roccat Ryos MK Pro for each profile. Better still, the Ryos MK Pro comes with a few special lighting effects, which can cause pressed keys to 9 $170, www.roccat.org briefly light up, or even to send out a ripple of light across

The Force K7 has a low profile, with Gigabyte Force K7 laptop-style scissor-switch keys. A budget-friendly board that’s light on features

With a $50 MSRP, the Force K7 targets the budget-minded consumer, but still hovers comfortably above the bottom of the barrel. Any keyboard involves compromises, but with the K7, there just might be too many. The K7 advertises “extreme short actuation distance” for its keys, which are built on laptop-style scissor switches. Keyboard feel is a matter of personal preference, of course, but for gam- ing we’ve never been very fond of scissor switches, which offer almost no tactile feedback. The key layout on the K7 is stan- backlighting and a pair of thumbwheels, which can only be used dard, though it uses the half-width backspace key and double- to control volume and backlight intensity. decker enter key configuration that’s less commonly seen in There are no glaring problems with the K7, but without a clear gaming keyboards and makes touch typing a bit more difficult. performance advantage, there’s nothing to recommend this Build quality on the K7 is generally good—it’s sturdy and board over one of the low-end Logitech or Microsoft keyboards, feels heavy on the desk. Our review unit did, however, come which are similarly priced and offer a better set of features. with an extra 0 key instead of the hyphen key, which raises some questions about quality assurance. If anything, the K7 is notable for its lack of gaming-specific features. It has no macro keys, no profiles, no ability to rebind verdict Gigabyte Force K7 keys, no USB passthroughs—none of the things that identify a keyboard as made especially for gaming. The only extra fea- 7 $50, www.gigabyte.us tures the board does include are underwhelming three-color

44 MAXIMUMPC MAR 2014 maximumpc.com If you're the kind of gamer who needs Corsair Raptor K50 an unhealthy number of macro keys, The Cadillac of non-mechanical keyboards the Raptor K50 is for you.

The Corsair Raptor K50 is a beautifully designed board, borrowing the floating-keys design of the more expensive Vengeance boards, with just a hint of brushed aluminum along the top edge. The look is rounded out with high-quality customizable key lighting that shines through the keycaps, without leaking out around the edges of the keys. Build quality is second-to-none, and as usual, the raised-key design makes it easy to keep crumbs from accumulating under the keycaps. The K50 is nicely feature-packed, with a USB passthrough, media keys, a large metal volume wheel, and, oh yeah, like a million macro keys. Well, 18, anyway, all in one huge bank at the left, along with dedicated buttons for switching between three macro layers and recording them on the fly. That number might be bordering on the too-many-to-actually-use zone, but some gamers might find a use for them all, and on-the-fly recording feature-packed mechanical board, such as Corsair’s own is a feature we wish more boards had. The software for the K50 Vengeance K70 or K90. works well, and onboard storage allows you to use your profiles on any computer. We like the K50 a lot, but—at the risk of sounding like a broken record—for most users we wouldn’t recommend a verdict Corsair Raptor K50 non-mechanical $100 board. Our recommendation at this price range would be to get a mechanical board with slightly 9 $100, www.corsair.com fewer features, or to jump up an extra $30 and get a similarly

The Mumbo Jumbo

Just like every other peripheral, there’s a lot of jargon used to describe features in gaming keyboards. Because these technical terms are often featured prominently on market- ing material, we think it’s important that anyone looking to buy a keyboard knows what they mean. Here are three of the most common terms, explained: Anti-Ghosting/N-Key Rollover If you spent much time using an old or cheap keyboard, you probably encountered “ghosting,” the phenomenon whereby a keyboard could only keep track of about three simultaneous keypresses. If you wanted to jump, sprint, circle-strafe, and throw a grenade all at once, your keyboard would likely flub the input. Anti- ghosting, or “n-key rollover,” allows you to hit tons of keys at resent a different responsiveness and feel. For a full primer once with no problems. At this point, every decent gaming on switch types, visit http://bit.ly/JwpUYh. keyboard offers this feature, and we would never buy one ARM Processors The latest fad we’ve noticed in keyboard without it. marketing is to brag about the number of microcontrollers Mechanical Keys The latest improvement in high-end inside a gaming keyboard. Though the box blurb is usually gaming keyboards is the (re)introduction of mechanical written to make it sound like there’s a high-powered smart- switches. There’s a ton that could be written about this phone proc toiling away inside the keyboard, they are very technology, but what you really need to know is that almost low-powered, and exist to enable specific features, like on- everyone uses Cherry MX switches, and that they come in board profiles or per-key backlighting. In short, ignore this different colors, such as “Cherry MX Blue,” which each rep- and focus on what the keyboard can do for you.

maximumpc.com MAR 2014 MAXIMUMPC 45 EXCLUSIVELY FEATURING VARIABLE MOUNTING UP TO 4 DIFFERENT MOTHERBOARD ORIENTATIONS

STANDARD 90-DEGREES STANDARD INVERTED 90-DEGREES INVERTED

ADDITIONAL FEATURES Exclusive ORIGIN PC industrial design Supports up to 4-WAY SLI in any orientation 5 hot swappable hard drives bays Smart fan controller Dual-hinge front door (configure to open left or right) Remote controlled lighting with 16 colors and 4 effects

BOTTOM EXPANSION KIT ENTER PROMO CODE: “ORIGINMAXPC” Converts a Mid-Tower RECEIVE FREE GPU OVERCLOCKING (MILLENNIUM) to a Full-Tower (GENESIS) for additional liquid-cooling Learn More support or additional www.ORIGINPC.com/MaxPC storage drives.

Follow Us @originpc |    

©2014 ORIGIN PC Corporation all rights reserved. ORIGIN and the ORIGIN “O” symbol are Powered by trademarks of ORIGIN PC Corporation. All other trademarks are property of their respective owners. Copyright © 2014 NVIDIA Corporation

* or any other world. The Human Race Will Always Prevail… Available only on ORIGIN PC’s GENESIS and MILLENNIUM Line of Desktops Actual-Size Computing

Yes, the Haswell NUC is actually this small.

48 MAXIMUMPC MAR 2014 maximumpc.com Actual-Size Computing We tour the burgeoning world of wee PCs By Gordon Mah Ung

n case you haven’t noticed, the PC is getting smaller. But it’s not getting smaller in the way the PC fatalists see it. If anything, enthusiast PCs have gotten larger. Witness Cor- sair’s 900D, Cooler Master’s Cosmos SE, and Digital Storm’s Aventum II. IThe truth isn’t that the PC is getting smaller and thus going away; the truth is that for enthusiasts, there’s interest in gigantic PCs, small micro-towers, and now—Intel hopes—ultra-compact form factor (UCFF) PCs no larger than a book. All of which serve unique purposes, and thereby highlight the PCs unmatched versatility. UCFF PCs as a category aren’t new, of course. They’ve been around for years, but their performance has always been fairly un- derwhelming and they’ve always consisted of specialty hardware, to be embedded into an ATM or smart soda machine. But now that these compact computers are more capable than ever, readily available, and easily built, there’s no telling what new and interesting applications will spring forth. Is Intel actually onto something big with its new Next Unit of Computing (NUC) initiative?

maximumpc.com MAR 2014 MAXIMUMPC 49 Actual-Size Computing Next Unit of What? Intel’s push to make the desktop smaller

Intel is even offering a limited- edition customized Dragon NUC.

Trying to figure out the actions of the world’s largest chip com- Challenges to NUC pany can be confounding to consumers who don’t fully appreciate One of the challenges NUC and its ilk share is the limited board Intel’s size-13 footprint on the PC industry and its ability to single- space. At 4x4 inches, jamming in features has meant adding handedly change the game. more layers to the motherboard. While typical ATX mother- Sometimes when Intel sees a niche it thinks needs to be filled, boards feature six- or even four-layer PCBs, NUCs’ are 10-layer. it tries to jump start it from scratch. The company tried and failed, Adding layers isn’t cheap, either. For example, in a 10-layer for example, with its Common Building Block program that was ATX motherboard—which you might see with a dual-proc board, meant to create a DIY-laptop world with standardized power where additional layers are needed to run all the traces of both bricks, hard drives, optical drives, LCD panels, keyboards, and processors—the PCB itself costs about $90. battery packs. While CBB never took off, many of the fruits of that The path going forward for NUC isn’t to blow them up in size, effort are still with us. either. Rather than making them, say, 5x5 inches or more in the Now, Intel is attempting to both create and fill a niche again future, Intel says it’s more interested in getting a 65-watt TDP with its Next Unit of Computing, or NUC (rhymes with “luck”), a processor to work reliably in a package of NUC’s current size. Of new ultra-compact form factor that the company hopes will push course, adding a hotter CPU means more cooling and a bigger performance computing into unheard-of places. and more power-hungry power brick, too. Unlike the CBB program, which was totally reliant on the par- ticipation of parts makers and laptop builders, NUCs are actually NUC Sales built and sold by Intel itself. In a nutshell, NUCs are simply 4x4- So, are NUC and NUC-style devices resonating with consumers? inch computers packing as much power as possible. Intel didn’t give us exact sales figures, but it says it has seen From what we can tell, Intel’s actions aren’t intended to drive healthy demand, with quarter-on-quarter growth from 30–50 others out of the market. In fact, Intel seems to be trying to invite percent. Interestingly, Intel says that even after it offered a others into the NUC game. Thus far, Gigabyte has jumped in with its lower-cost Celeron version using the Sandy Bridge microarchi- NUC-style Brix boxes that are proving to be fairly innovative. There tecture, the demand has mostly been at the high end, with con- are also other smaller and lesser-known brands and embedded-PC sumers actually preferring the initial Ivy Bridge Core i5 version. vendors in there, as well. That’s another reason Intel thinks that NUCs aren’t actually Unlike Thin ITX (which you can read about on page 56), NUC- hurting the desktop. In fact, Intel believes the demand for a lot of style boxes aren’t designed around industry-standard specs. The performance, albeit in a tiny package, will reinvigorate the desk- only things common between the NUC and Brix, for example, are top, as people seek to put a PC in places they never could before. the footprint, the power brick, and other mobile components they accommodate. You won’t, for example, be able to swap a moth- erboard from a Brix into a NUC because these PCs are generally customized to the chassis they’re in.

50 MAXIMUMPC MAR 2014 maximumpc.com Intel NUC D54250WYK Haswell comes to the NUC

The original Intel NUC DC3217BY we saw in late 2012 was an odd duck. The case was maroon and black, and while it showcased In- tel’s newfangled Thunderbolt connectivity, there were no Ether- net, USB 3.0, or analog audio out. Intel cited limited board space as the reason for the port selec- tion on that model (to be fair, Intel did offer a dual-HDMI version with gigabit Ethernet and a single USB 3.0 port) and soldiered on despite the skepticism over the device. That’s good news because the latest NUC leaves few questions unanswered. The newest Haswell NUC D54250WYK shares the same footprint as the original NUC but sits about an eighth of an inch shorter. After a puzzling first Rather than the Core i3-3217U in the original NUC, the top-end effort, Intel offers nearly Haswell NUC features a 1.3GHz Core i5-4250U that will Turbo all you could ask for in its Boost up to 2.6GHz. There’s no lack of ports on this unit, either. The NUC follow-up. Haswell NUC includes a Mini Display Port, Mini HDMI, gigabit Eth- same board in a future NUC that will be tall enough to support ernet, four USB 3.0 ports, analog audio out, and an infrared port. cheaper and far larger notebook hard drives. The motherboard it- Internally, there’s a pair of DDR3 SO-DIMM slots and stacked self is an Intel design and features a beautiful UEFI as well as the Mini PCIe slots that let you install an mSATA drive and wireless QS87 chipset. card. The original NUC had overheating issues that caused some Performance isn’t a primary concern for people who run these of the mSATA drives to error out. Intel has apparently addressed mini PCs, but we decided to see how this Haswell NUC stacked up this by tweaking the fan and adding a thermal pad that rests on against the original NUC. That unit features a 1.8 Core i3-3217U the mSATA drive. The shell in all NUCs is prewired for Wi-Fi. The CPU on the Ivy Bridge microarchitecture. Both NUCs are dual-core motherboard in this NUC also features a SATA 6Gb/s port and Hyper-Threaded parts, so the only real performance difference is a port for SATA power, too. Intel apparently plans to use the due to the Turbo Boost of the Haswell and the newer microarchi- tecture. As expected, the Core i5 gave the original Ivy Bridge a pasting in CPU-related tasks. In graphics, it’s closer between the SPECIFICATIONS/Benchmarks HD4000 and HD5000, but the Haswell part generally was in front. Oddly, the Ivy Bridge NUC came out on top in 3DMark Ice Storm, Haswell NUC Ivy Bridge NUC which tests basic graphics performance, but fell back in 3DMark Model D54250WYK DC3217IYE Cloud Gate. Neither NUC is suited for serious gaming, but in the CPU 1.3GHz Core i5-4250U 1.8GHz Core i3-3217U 10-year-old Counter Strike: Source graphics stress test, both gave Graphics HD5000 HD4000 acceptable frame rates at 1080p. Ports Mini HDMI 1.4a, 2x HDMI 1.4a, 3x USB We measured power consumption of both NUCs using the same DisplayPort 1.2, 4x USB 2.0, gigabit Ethernet, power load and the same power brick (both were outfitted with 3.0, gigabit Ethernet, Kensington lock port similar parts, too). On idle, the Haswell unit drank about 5 watts analog audio out, IrDA, versus the 8 watts of the Ivy Bridge unit. We also tried a worst-case Kensington lock port scenario with Prime95 and Furmark running simultaneously. The Stitch.EFx (sec) 1,747 2,453 Haswell used 24 watts to the Ivy Bridge’s 35W. While watching a 1080p video on YouTube, the Ivy Bridge unit used but 14.5 watts, ProShow Producer (sec) 2,567 3,729 interestingly, while the Haswell NUC used 19 watts. 3DMark Cloud Gate 3,958 3,409 The Haswell NUC is likely the fastest NUC available today, as no 3DMark Ice Storm 32,157 35,969 one has figured out how to shoehorn a quad-core into the unit. But Counter Strike Source 63.23 52.4 it’s not cheap. We found the unit on the street for about $375. Be- (fps) fore you balk, remember that you’re getting a kit that includes the Google Octane 2.0 17,832 10,643 CPU and PSU. Yes, you can get a cheaper system by going larger— Power Consumption Idle 5 8 but if you want small and fast, this is the best yet. (watts) Power Consumption 24 35 Prime95+Furmark (watts) Power Consumption 19 14.5 verdict YouTube 1080p (watts) Intel NUC D54250WYK

Best scores are bolded. 8 $375, www.intel.com

maximumpc.com MAR 2014 MAXIMUMPC 51 Actual-Size Computing Gigabyte Brix Projector GB-BXPi3-4010 A Pocket-Size theater

Intel’s goal with the NUC initiative was to create a new category of computing. What that category would be or how it would be used, the company didn’t really know when it started. While Gigabyte has several NUC-style clones, dubbed the “Brix” line, the one that really captured our interest is the Brix Projector. Yup, a UCFF PC with a DLP pico projector and 1.5-watt speaker integrated into it. The projector isn’t super bright, but it outputs a decent 75 ANSI-rated lumens. That means you won’t be using it outdoors in the daylight or in a very bright room, but it’s far better than the first 15-lumen pico projectors of yesteryear. It of- fers enough light that Gigabyte rates the device as being capable of projecting on a screen up to 85 inches. Resolution is also aver- age at 864x480, or WVGA res, but that’s pretty standard for most pico projectors that are still actually “pico.” We’ll also note that lower resolutions are actually quite passable for media projec- tion. Gigabyte even had the foresight to integrate a standard tripod mount into the base of the PC, too. Yup. There’s indeed a pro- Inside the Brix Projector you’ll find a pair of DDR3 SO-DIMM jector integrated into this slots, and the same stacked layout to take mSATA and Wi-Fi cards PC that’s no bigger than a as in Intel NUCs. External ports are also generous, with four USB Wendy’s Baconator. 3.0, gigabit Ethernet, a Mini DisplayPort 1.2, full-size HDMI 1.4a, The CPU in the model we reviewed is a Haswell 1.7GHz Core i3- an analog jack that pulls double duty as optical a S/PDIF output, 4010U with HD4400 graphics. Again, extreme performance isn’t a and a Mini HDMI-in port should you want to use the unit as a pro- key metric for people looking at this class of device, but we were jector from another device. still interested to see how it did against the Ivy Bridge Intel NUC DC3217IYE. Remember, both the Intel Ivy Bridge NUC and the Brix have Turbo Boost disabled at the factory. Despite the Ivy Bridge SPECIFICATIONS/Benchmarks NUC having a 100MHz advantage, the Brix Projector was slightly faster in some tests. In other tests, though, both were dead even. Brix Projector Ivy Bridge NUC Clearly, if you really need the performance in a UCFF, pony up for Model GB-BXPi3-4010 DC3217IYE a Core i5 part. CPU 1.7GHz Core i3-4010U 1.8 Core i3-3217U In general, power consumption on idle was slightly higher (us- Graphics HD4400 HD4000 ing an external monitor) with the IB NUC; under our CPU- and Ports HDMI 1.4a, Mini HDMI 2x HDMI 1.4a, 3x USB GPU-heavy loads and simply playing a 1080p YouTube video, the in, Mini DisplayPort 1.2, 2.0, gigabit Ethernet, Brix was on par with the Haswell Intel NUC. As with that PC, the gigabit Ethernet, 4x Kensington lock port Brix Projector consumed more power than the older Ivy Bridge USB 3.0, analog audio, NUC playing the 1080p video. S/PDIF Using the Brix Projector is a hoot. The graphics signal, you Stitch.EFx (sec) 2,441 2,453 should know, is passed internally, so there’s no hooptie external pass-through cable. You can actually run both the projector and ProShow Producer (sec) 3,564 3,729 an external monitor simultaneously. 3DMark Cloud Gate 3,667 3,409 Overall, it’s a slick little unit. The question is, what would a nor- 3DMark Ice Storm 26,475 35,969 mal person need it for? The answer is, most of us wouldn’t need it. Counter Strike Source 53.29 52.4 But don’t take that to be a negative. There are certainly specialized (fps) applications for it, such as media installations, commercial appli- Google Octane 2.0 11,624 10,643 cations, or even an ad-hoc mini-theater setup for the kids. Again, Power Consumption Idle 7.5 8 it’s not everybody’s cup of tea, but the fact that you can get a “real” (watts) computer with a 75-lumen projector is pretty mind-boggling. Power Consumption 24 35 Prime95+Furmark (watts) Power Consumption 19 14.5 verdict YouTube 1080p trailer Gigabyte Brix Projector (watts) Best scores are bolded. 7 $600, www.gigabyte.us

52 MAXIMUMPC MAR 2014 maximumpc.com Gigabyte Brix Pro Faster than a tower. Really

In the land of ARM and off-brand x86 parts, the dual-core Core i3 is king. After all, when we talk about the “high-performance” needs of UCFF users, the performance of a Haswell-based CPU or even an Ivy Bridge part is like going back in time and landing a P-51 Mustang next to the Wright brothers after they just touched down at Kitty Hawk. Following that same analogy, you can think of Gigabyte’s blister- ingly fast Brix Pro as an X-Wing fighter making a fly-by, wagging its wings, and then flipping the bird before making the jump to light speed. We’re not kidding, either. The Brix Pro is simply the fastest NUC-style UCFF we’ve ever tested. We actually watched it outpace our full-tower, six-core 3.2 Core i7-3630K that’s clocked full-time The Brix Pro packs in more at 3.9GHz. performance per cubic The secret is Gigabyte’s ability to magically integrate a full-on inch than any system we’ve Core i7-4770R in the Brix Pro. The Core i7-4770R “Crystalwell” is ever tested. no mere Haswell part. Its main claim to fame is 128MB of super- fast embedded DRAM on the CPU package that acts as gigantic L4 Physically, the Pro is about 2.5 inches tall, making it about half cache (a Core i7-4770K’s L3 cache is 8MB). This cache greatly in- an inch taller than the Intel Haswell NUC on page 51. That height, creases bandwidth for graphics operations and puts it on par with though, gives the Brix Pro the capability to mount a 9.5mm 2.5-inch GeForce GT 650M discrete graphics. Since it acts as L4 cache, it can notebook drive. The motherboard still has an mSATA slot, so you can also greatly aid some application workloads, too. And no you can’t run an SSD as well as one of the upcoming 2TB 9.5mm hard drives. buy it, it’s only available soldered to motherboards. Oh, and it’s a Like other NUC-style machines, besides the mSATA slot, you’ll full-on desktop-class quad-core Hyper-Threaded i7 chip that’ll hit also find a mini PCIe slot that Gigabyte has already populated with an 3.9GHz on Turbo. 802.11ac, as well as two SO-DIMM slots. There’s a single integrated power and SATA connector for the 2.5-inch drive, as well. On the performance tip, as we said, the Brix Pro smokes all other SPECIFICATIONS/Benchmarks NUCs. That’s not a surprise, as it’s a quad-core part going up against dual-core parts. And we don’t mean a wisp of smoke—it’s a full four- Brix Pro Ivy Bridge NUC alarm smoke-out with the Brix Pro offering 200 percent performance Model GB-BXi7-4770R DC3217IYE increases over the Ivy Bridge NUC and from 82–163 percent increas- CPU 3.2GHz Core i7-4770R 1.8GHz Core i3-3217U es over the Haswell NUC. This desktop Haswell-R part is so fast, it Graphics Iris Pro 5200 HD4000 slightly outpaced our desktop zero-point system in ProShow Produc- Ports HDMI 1.4a, DisplayPort 2x HDMI 1.4a, 3x USB er 5 and was slower by just 4 percent in Stitch.Efx 2.0 runs. Yes, faster 1.2, 4x USB 3.0, gigabit 2.0, gigabit Ethernet, than a six-core overclocked machine that’s 30 times bigger. Granted, Ethernet, Kensington Kensington lock port the tower will eat it in multithreaded tasks and gaming, but the fact lock port that a machine smaller than a retail CPU box can be faster than a mid-tower machine is incredible. Stitch.EFx (sec) 867 2,453 There’s a cost, though. When you’re hammering it with a heavy ProShow Producer (sec) 1,410 3,729 workload, it gets a little whiny. It’s not horrible, but you will hear the 3DMark Cloud Gate 10,406 3,409 fan under very heavy loads. It also drinks more. The CPU has a TDP 3DMark Ice Storm 68,195 35,969 rating of 65 watts and under extreme CPU and GPU loads, we saw Counter Strike Source 149.43 52.4 at-the-wall power usage hit near 90 watts. Most of the time though, (fps) power consumption is quite reasonable. The last issue is cost. This Google Octane 2.0 26,893 10,643 bare-bones kit will set you back $650. Much of that is the CPU ($400), Power Consumption Idle 8 8 but either way, we know there’s a price for miniaturization. At least (watts) with the Brix Pro, you’re getting a hell of a lot of performance. Power Consumption 87 35 Prime95+Furmark (watts) Power Consumption 20 14.5 Gigabyte GB-BXi7-4770R YouTube 1080p trailer (watts) 9 $650, www.gigabyte.us

Best scores are bolded.

maximumpc.com MAR 2014 MAXIMUMPC 53 Actual-Size Computing DIY NUC You can roll your own NUC—but should you?

To a DIYer, “building” a NUC is a bit of an insult. You basically buy a NUC or Brix, slot in two SO-DIMMs, a Wi-Fi card, an mSATA drive, DIY NUC-style and install the OS. If you posted such a “build” on YouTube, the ha- zelnut gallery would come out of the woodwork to rip you a new one Silverstone Petit PT14 chassis $40 in the comment section. Intel D33217GKE mobo/CPU $310 All is not lost, however, for true wrenchers who want to actually 19V power brick $16 build a UCFF PC from scratch, so-called kits be damned. We just Wi-Fi antennas $10 wonder whether it makes much sense, because at this point there Windows 8 OEM OS $99 are a lot of barriers to entry to building your own. Adata 8GB DDR3/1333 RAM $65 The first issue is getting a chassis. Intel has told us it really sees these devices as being purely custom computing options with the 120GB Crucial mSATA drive $108 base NUC and NUC-style machines. While Mini-ITX and Thin ITX Intel 802.11ac Wi-Fi card $34 (more on that on page 56) feature standard I/O shields like their big- Total $682 ger siblings, ATX and microATX, NUC doesn’t have any standardized cutout for system I/O. That means any chassis would have to be built to take one of the multiple NUC motherboard port arrangements committed to supporting a DIY ecosystem, so rather than selling currently available. So don’t just buy a NUC motherboard and a NUC individual boards, it’s selling 10-packs of motherboards intended chassis without making sure they match. Most vendors will specify for system builders or integrators. In a bit of a wink, wink, nod, nod, which NUC motherboard the chassis will fit. though, some of the bulk packs of motherboards are broken up and To experience what it would be like to build our own NUC, we ran sold to end users. This, of course, raises questions about warranty with a Silverstone PT14 chassis. This aluminum chassis comes with support, but according to LogicSupply.com (a popular vendor of an I/O shield for either the dual-HDMI-port Ivy Bridge boards or the embedded systems that seems to stock most of the esoteric NUC Thunderbolt version. Our PT14 is the dual-HDMI version. parts), the warranty for the boards are covered directly by Intel even The next issue is securing the NUC motherboard. Intel isn’t fully if purchased stand-alone, so it seems Intel will stand behind them.

Parts of a Whole The essential components of a DIY NUC

This Intel D33217GKE NUC motherboard isn’t The Silverstone PT14 NUC chassis dis- packaged for consumers, but you can still buy sipates heat using a heat pipe with a fan them with apparent warranty support from Intel. blowing air out the bottom.

54 MAXIMUMPC MAR 2014 maximumpc.com No, not at all. Not once you run the numbers. The parts to build BARE-BONES INTEL NUC your own NUC from scratch cost about $682 (including $99 for the OS). If you had bought a NUC bare-bones system and added the Intel DC3217IYE $255 same 802.11ac, mSATA, and RAM from the DIY package you would Windows 8 OEM OS $99 spend $561. Ouch. And that’s without having to search through Adata 8GB DDR3/1333 RAM $65 Uncle Jim’s used computer store for a pair of rubber duck Wi-Fi 120GB Crucial mSATA drive $108 antennas and finding someone who actually sells NUC chassis. Intel 802.11ac Wi-Fi card $34 From a fiscal point of view, it makes no sense whatsoever. Even our Total $561 standard edict that building your own box gives you control over the parts, fan placement, and appearance doesn’t apply because, really, is there that much of a difference? The board we went with was an Intel DC33217GKE “Golden Lake” Again, Intel says it’s not sure where it’s going with NUC as a DIY motherboard. It comes with an integrated heatsink and fan—which proposition and that’s apparent to us, because the real kick in the won’t work, as the PT14 chassis features an integrated heat pipe gut here is the motherboard. A NUC bare-bones kit with mother- that connects directly to the chassis. Since the CPU is 17 watts, board, power brick, chassis, and internal Wi-Fi antennas is $255 on it’s possible to dissipate much of the heat through the chassis. Our the street. The best price we could find for the NUC motherboard Golden Lake motherboard came with a standard Intel cooler, which alone was $310. Perhaps if Intel decides to make the price of the we unscrewed by first removing the two visible screws holding NUC boards more reasonable the DIY angle will make sense. Today, down the fan. We then removed the three fans holding down the it’s a waste of scratch no matter how you cut it. heatsink and gently removed it from the board. The PT14 does have a single fan that’s set to exhaust air out the bottom of the chassis. From there it’s as simple as screwing the motherboard to the top of the chassis, populating the RAM, Wi-Fi card, and mSATA, install- ing the power button, and you’re done. All told, it took us about 15 minutes to roll our own NUC going at a leisurely pace so as not to forever lose the screws. We’ll note that the Wi-Fi antennas didn’t come with our 802.11ac card (they typically don’t) so you’ll have to secure a pair of rubber duckies with cables (just Bing “rubber wifi antenna and internal cable,” select Image, and search for the rub- don’t just buy a NUC ber duck antennas with internal cables. They’re typically under $10.) Before you’re done, though, you’ll also need to buy the 19-volt motherboard and a NUC power brick. Intel actually sells them on its NUC parts page for $15, or they can be found at retailers for $16, typically. chassis without making There, you’re done. You’ve just built your first Next Unit of Com- puting. It wasn’t difficult and it’s kind of fun. But does it make sense? sure they match

You’ll need a Mini PCIe card for networking, and have to secure a pair of rubber duck antennas With NUC, you’ll want higher- or internal patch antennas (not clocked RAM modules and a pictured). dual-channel config if you care at all about 3D performance.

Like most NUCs, our DIY takes The NUC and Brix units an mSATA drive. Newer units, all share the same basic however, will take 2.5-inch drives 65-watt power supply. at the cost of space.

maximumpc.com MAR 2014 MAXIMUMPC 55 Actual-Size Computing Thin ITX The other UCFF you’ve never heard of

You know everything you need to about Intel’s NUC and you’re probably pretty familiar with Mini-ITX, a form factor originally created by VIA, but do you know about Thin ITX? Don’t be embarrassed if Thin ITX is capable of being almost half the thickness of the smallest you don’t. We’ve probably only written Mini-ITX systems, thanks to the about this nascent form factor once, when smaller I/O shield size and note- we did an all-in-one-PC Build It two years book components. Here’s one next ago, and hell, Thin ITX is still so niche, no to a NUC for comparison. one has even bothered to write a Wikipedia entry for it yet. Thin ITX uses the same 6.7x6.7-inch footprint as Mini-ITX but considerably reduces the I/O shield “cutout” to about half its size. While most Mini-ITX boards tend to use desktop RAM and components, Thin ITX uses SO-DIMMs, mSATA, and Mini PCIe connectors. One key feature of many Thin ITX boards (at least thus far) is the use of a desktop socket, which lets you build your system on your terms. Most of the coolers we’ve seen limit you to 65-watt TDP parts and the moth- erboards mostly max out at 84-watt TDP ing a 180-watt brick for 84-watt TDP CPUs and a 150-watt brick parts. You’d think that would limit you to Core i3 procs, but In- for everything lower. Unlike many of the Mini-ITX thin cases that tel actually makes low-wattage Core i7 “S” and “T” parts that need internal DC-DC converters, the power brick can be plugged fit that power envelope. If you wanted, you could actually build a directly into the Thin ITX boards. The boards have four PCIe slots, 1.5-inches-tall Thin ITX box packing a Core i7-4770S quad-core but discrete graphics is still out of the question. It’s a problem with Hyper-Threading that Turbos up to 3.9GHz. that really hurts Thin ITX in our eyes. Intel has designed Thin ITX Before you get too excited, however, know that Thin ITX is far to be used in mini PCs as well as all-in-one systems and thus from NUC-easy to build. The chassis are so thin, you’ll need a also includes an internal LVDS connector for the panel in an AiO. low-profile cooler that’s specifically meant to fit it. In our case, we Undoubtedly, this makes it pretty difficult to design for discrete used Silverstone’s PT13B chassis along with the matching low- graphics. It seems that Intel’s long-term goal is to just improve its profile AR04 cooler. The PT13B allows you to mount a 2.5-inch own GPU to the levels needed for the average UCFF user. drive inside the case. Wiring inside the case gets fairly tricky—Sil- The last consideration is price. We built a box using the PT13B, verstone’s new CP11 super-thin cables would be a good idea here. a Gigabyte H87-TN board, a Core i3-4130, a 150-watt power brick, One other thing you’ll need to think about with Thin ITX is an ex- an AR04 cooler, and the same mSATA drive, 802.11ac card, and ternal power brick. Motherboard maker Gigabyte is recommend- 8GB of DDR3/1333 we used in our NUC build, and the price came to $681. That’s shockingly close to the DIY NUC we built on page 54, as well as the new Haswell NUC we reviewed on page 31. The DIY Thin ITX main difference is CPU, which in our case is a Haswell-based Core i3-4130 ticking along at 3.4GHz. We don’t even have to benchmark Gigabyte H87-TN mobo $131 it to know that it’ll burn the 1.8GHz Core i3-3217U in the DIY NUC Silverstone Tek PT13B chassis $72 to the ground, as well as the 1.3GHz–2.6GHz Core i5-4250U in the Silverstone Tek AR04 cooler $27 bare-bones Haswell NUC. Our Thin ITX build can’t touch the Brix Intel Core i3-4130 CPU $129 Pro with its built-in Core i7-4770R, but at least it’s cheaper. 150 watt TDP power brick $16 Just remember that despite the small footprint of our Thin ITX Windows 8 OEM OS $99 mini PC, it’s still pretty damn big compared to the NUC—there’s Adata 8GB DDR3/1333 RAM $65 a price to be paid for miniaturization. Still, we have to say, Thin 120GB Crucial mSATA drive $108 ITX represents itself well and its flexibility is far greater than any NUC. Then again, a full tower is even more flexible, and if you Intel 802.11ac Wi-Fi card $34 wanted to go down that road, you’d be sitting in your living room Total $681 with a Corsair 900D next to your HDTV in no time.

56 MAXIMUMPC MAR 2014 maximumpc.com

CHOOSE YOUR WEAPON

— CHOOSE WISELY AT — SAGERNOTEBOOK.COM

Sager recommends Windows 8. NP 9380-S

4th Generation Intel® Core™ i7-4700MQ 6X Blu-ray Reader / 8X DVD±R/2.4X +DL Processor (6MB L3 Cache, 2.40GHz) Super Multi Drive Genuine Windows® 8.1 64-bit Edition 2 Hard Drives + 2 mSATA SSD Drives Capable 17.3" 3D 120Hz Full HD LED Display with Raid 0, 1 Function (1920x1080) featuring 72% NTSC Color Gamut Full sized Keyboard with LED backlight in Matte Finished Screen with one pair of Intel® Dual Band Wireless-AC 7260 Wireless NVIDIA® 3D Glasses LAN + Bluetooth Wireless Combo 30 days No Dead Pixel Guaranteed Insurance Built-in Card Reader, Fingerprint Reader and Optional 17.3" Full HD LED Display 2.0 FHD Video Camera (1920x1080) with Matte Finished Screen Thunderbolt Port & HDMI 1.4 output Port 4GB DDR5 NVIDIA® GeForce™ GTX 780M GPU Built-in Onkyo speakers and a sub-woofer Optional Dual NVIDIA® GeForce™ GTX 780M Sound Blaster® X-Fi™ MB3 Sound System GPU with SLI™ Technology Microsoft® Office 2013 Trial* 16GB Dual Channel DDR3-1600MHz Memory 750GB 7200RPM SATA II Hard Drive $2099 Dealer/VAR, Government and Corporate pricing are available. Please call for details. AFTER $155 INSTANT SAVINGS!

Sager One Year Limited Warranty Policy: 30-Day Money-Back Guarantee. If the equipment does not work as promised, or if you are not fully satisfied, we will issue a full refund upon the return of all original equipment. 1-Year Parts and Labor Limited Warranty. Lifetime Toll-Free Technical Support. Sager One Year Limited Warranty and Three Year Limited Warranty Policy Applies to End Users in the United States of America only. Extended Warranty Available: Check out this comprehensive package of service/support. Business Leasing Available: Get your dream notebook with low monthly payments! Sager Corporate Offices 18005 Cortney Court, City of Industry, California 91748 Tel: 626.964.8682, Fax: 626.964.2381 Hours: Monday-Friday 7:30a.m. - 6p.m.(PST) American Express, VISA, MasterCard & Discover Credit Cards Accepted - No Surcharge. Cashiers Checks Welcomed. ©2014 by Midern Computer, Inc. All rights reserved. Ultrabook, Celeron, Celeron Inside, Core Inside, Intel, Intel Logo, Intel Atom, Intel Atom Inside, Intel Core, Intel Inside, Intel Inside Logo, Intel vPro, Itanium, Itanium Inside, Pentium, Pentium Inside, vPro Inside, Xeon, Xeon Phi, and Xeon Inside are trademarks of Intel Corporation in the U.S. and/or other countries. This PC is preloaded with trial version of Microsoft Office 2013. Purchase an Office 2013 Product Key to activate full version Office software. All company and/or product names mentioned herein are trademarks and/or registered trademarks of their respective companies. Prices and specifications are subject to change without notice. Opened software and shipping charges are non-refundable. 30-Day money back guarantee does not include freight or shipping and handling charge.

Call us toll-free at: For up-to-the-minute pricing and ordering information: 800.669.1624 sagernotebook.com NP NP NP NP 9570 8265-S 8275-S 8255-S

Intel® Core™ i7-3930K Processor 4th Generation Intel® Core™ i7-4700MQ 4th Generation Intel® Core™ i7-4700MQ 4th Generation Intel® Core™ i7-4700MQ (12MB L3 Cache, 3.20GHz) Processor (6MB L3 Cache, 2.40GHz) Processor (6MB L3 Cache, 2.40GHz) Processor (6MB L3 Cache, 2.40GHz) Genuine Windows® 8.1 64-bit Edition Genuine Windows® 8.1 64-bit Edition Genuine Windows® 8.1 64-bit Edition Genuine Windows® 8.1 64-bit Edition 17.3" Full HD LED Display (1920x1080) 15.6" Full HD LED Display (1920x1080) 17.3" Full HD LED Display (1920x1080) with 15.6" Full HD LED Display (1920x1080) featuring 72% NTSC Color Gamut in Matte featuring 95% NTSC Color Gamut in Matte Matte Finished Screen featuring 95% NTSC Color Gamut in Matte Finished Screen Finished Screen 30 days No Dead Pixel Guaranteed Insurance Finished Screen Opt. 17.3” Full HD LED Display featuring 90% 30 days No Dead Pixel Guaranteed Insurance 3GB DDR5 NVIDIA® GeForce™ GTX 770M GPU 30 days No Dead Pixel Guaranteed Insurance NTSC Color Gamut in Super Clear Glare Screen 4GB DDR5 NVIDIA® GeForce™ GTX 780M GPU with Optimus™ Technology 4GB DDR5 Radeon HD 8970M Graphics 3GB DDR5 NVIDIA® GeForce™ GTX 770M GPU with Optimus™ Technology 16GB Dual Channel DDR3-1600MHz Memory Optional NVIDIA® GeForce™ GTX 780M GPU Optional NVIDIA® Quadro K5100M GPU, 16GB Dual Channel DDR3-1600MHz Memory 120GB Samsung 840 EVO SATA III SSD 8GB Dual Channel DDR3-1600MHz Memory GeForce™ GTX 780M GPU or Dual GTX 780M 120GB Crucial M500 mSATA III SSD 1TB 7200RPM SATA II Hard Drive 750GB 7200RPM SATA II Hard Drive GPU with SLI™ Technology 750GB 7200RPM SATA II Hard Drive 6X Blu-ray Reader / 8X DVD±R/2.4X +DL 8X DVD±R/RW/4X +DL Super Multi Drive 8GB Dual Channel DDR3-1600MHz Memory 6X Blu-ray Reader / 8X DVD±R/2.4X +DL Super Multi Drive 2 Hard Drives + 2 mSATA SSD Drives Capable 750GB 7200RPM SATA II Hard Drive Super Multi Drive 2 Hard Drives + 2 mSATA SSD Drives Capable with Raid 0, 1 Function 8X DVD±R/RW/4X +DL Super Multi Drive One Hard Drive + 2 mSATA SSD Drives with Raid 0, 1 Function Full sized Keyboard with LED backlight Hardware Raid 0, 1, 5 Function Capable with Raid 0,1 Function Full sized Keyboard with LED backlight Intel® Dual Band Wireless-AC 7260 Wireless One Optical Device and 3 Hard Drives Full sized Keyboard with LED backlight Intel® Dual Band Wireless-AC 7260 Wireless LAN + Bluetooth Wireless Combo Coexisting Capable Intel® Dual Band Wireless-AC 7260 Wireless LAN + Bluetooth Wireless Combo Built-in Card Reader, Fingerprint Reader and Integrated Wireless LAN 802.11b/g/n LAN + Bluetooth Wireless Combo Built-in Card Reader, Fingerprint Reader and 2.0M FHD Video Camera + Bluetooth Wireless Combo Built-in Card Reader, Fingerprint Reader and 2.0M FHD Video Camera DisplayPort 1.2, Mini DisplayPort 1.2 & HDMI Full sized Keyboard with LED backlight 2.0M FHD Video Camera DisplayPort 1.2, Mini DisplayPort 1.2 & HDMI 1.4 output for High-Definition Video Built-in Card Reader, ExpressCard™ slot, Built-in Onkyo speakers and a sub-woofer 1.4 output for High-Definition Video Built-in Onkyo speakers and a sub-woofer Fingerprint Reader and High-Res. Web Cam Sound Blaster® X-Fi™ MB3 Sound System Sound Blaster® X-Fi™ MB3 Sound System Sound Blaster® X-Fi™ MB3 Sound System Microsoft® Office 2013 Trial* Microsoft® Office 2013 Trial* Microsoft® Office 2013 Trial* Microsoft® Office 2013 Trial* $1999 $1899 $1599 $1499 AFTER $165 AFTER $85 AFTER $120 INSTANT SAVINGS! INSTANT SAVINGS! INSTANT SAVINGS!

NP NP NP NP 8235 7330 7355 6652

4th Generation Intel® Core™ i7-4700MQ 4th Generation Intel® Core™ i7-4700MQ 4th Generation Intel® Core™ i7-4700MQ 4th Generation Intel® Core™ i5-4200M Processor (6MB L3 Cache, 2.40GHz) Processor (6MB L3 Cache, 2.40GHz) Processor (6MB L3 Cache, 2.40GHz) Processor (3MB L3 Cache, 2.50GHz) Genuine Windows® 8.1 64-bit Edition Genuine Windows® 8.1 64-bit Edition Genuine Windows® 8.1 64-bit Edition Genuine Windows® 8.1 64-bit Edition 15.6" Full HD LED Display (1920x1080) with 13.3" Full HD LED Display (1920x1080) with 15.6" Full HD LED Display (1920x1080) with 15.6" Full HD LED Display (1920x1080) with Matte Finished Screen AHVA (Advanced-Hyper-View-Angle) in Matte Matte Finished Screen Matte Finished Screen 3GB DDR5 NVIDIA® GeForce™ GTX 770M GPU Finished Screen Also available in 17.3” Full HD LED Display with Also available in 17.3” Full HD LED Display with with Optimus™ Technology 2GB DDR5 NVIDIA® GeForce™ GTX 765M GPU model NP7370 (without Fingerprint Reader and model NP6670 (with Backlight Keyboard) 8GB Dual Channel DDR3-1600MHz Memory with Optimus™ Technology Backlight Keyboard) 2GB DDR3 NVIDIA® GeForce™ GT 750M GPU 750GB 7200RPM SATA II Hard Drive 8GB Dual Channel DDR3-1600MHz Memory 2GB DDR5 NVIDIA® GeForce™ GTX 765M GPU with Optimus™ Technology 8X DVD±R/RW/4X +DL Super Multi Drive 1TB 7200RPM SATA II Hard Drive with Optimus™ Technology 8GB Dual Channel DDR3-1600MHz Memory One Hard Drive + 2 mSATA SSD Drives Capable 1 Hard Drive and 2 mSATA SSD Drives with 8GB Dual Channel DDR3-1600MHz Memory 750GB 7200RPM SATA II Hard Drive with Raid 0, 1 Function Raid 1, 0 Function Capable 1TB 7200RPM SATA II Hard Drive 8X DVD±R/RW/4X +DL Super Multi Drive Integrated Wireless LAN 802.11b/g/n + Isolated Keyboard with LED backlight 8X DVD±R/RW/4X +DL Super Multi Drive 1 Hard Drive + 1 mSATA SSD Drive Capable Bluetooth Wireless Combo Intel® Dual Band Wireless-AC 7260 Wireless 2 Hard Drives with Raid 1, 0 Function + Integrated Wireless LAN 802.11b/g/n + Built-in Card Reader, Fingerprint Reader and LAN + Bluetooth Wireless Combo 1 mSATA SSD Drive Capable Bluetooth Wireless Combo 2.0M FHD Video Camera Built-in Card Reader and 2.0M HD Video Cam Isolated Keyboard with LED Backlight Built-in Card Reader and 2.0M HD DisplayPort 1.2, Mini DisplayPort 1.2 & HDMI Sound Blaster™ Cinema Sound System Integrated Wireless LAN 802.11b/g/n + Video Camera 1.4 output for High-Definition Video Microsoft® Office 2013 Trial* Bluetooth Wireless Combo Sound Blaster™ Cinema Sound System Sound Blaster® X-Fi™ MB3 Sound System Sound Blaster™ Cinema Sound System Microsoft® Office 2013 Trial* Microsoft® Office 2013 Trial* Microsoft® Office 2013 Trial* $1249 $11 9 9 $11 4 9 $949

R&D

Step-by-Step Guides to Improving Your PC

Windows Tip of the Month

AleX CaSTLE CONTRIBUTING EDITor What Windows Could Learn from Smartphones

It’s been years since smart- phones became a part of most techies’ lives, yet Microsoft still hasn’t added some of their best features to the Windows experi- ence. Here are two small fea- tures I would start with: Launch Modern Apps from the Windows 8.1 File Explorer A better clock I love the If you want to skip the Modern UI entirely, but still have access to apps iPhone’s clock app, which bun- downloaded from the Windows app store, you can. All you have to do is open a dles a multi-time alarm clock with snooze, a stopwatch, and a command prompt, then type explorer shell:AppsFolder and hit enter. A folder kitchen timer. I use all of those will open, containing icons for all your modern apps, which you can now pin or features at least every few days. create shortcuts for. The Windows 8 clock, on the other hand, shows you the time. There’s not even a Live tile with a clock in MAKE - USE - CREATE it. You can download one from the app store, but none of the options are fantastic, and this really is a feature that should be included. Autocorrect OK, I know all the horror stories about auto- correct fails, but would it really kill Microsoft to add a low-grade autocorrect system-wide? No wild 62 64 guessing, but if I type “explian” Fine-Tune Edit Photos into my browser, my PC should be Your SSD with Gimp able to figure out what I’m trying to get at.

↘ submit your How To project idea to: [email protected]

maximumpc.com MAR 2014 MAXIMUMPC 61 R&D

Fine-Tune Your SSD

You’ll need this The instant increase in performance you get from switching from a hard disk to a solid-state drive is quite special. You don’t notice an upgraded CPU in the same way (unless you’re replac- Windows 7 or 8 ing a Pentium II), and as for RAM? Forget it. This how-to works with either. No other component transforms your everyday computer use like an SSD, which is why mak- ing sure it’s running as efficiently as possible is a worthwhile endeavor. Updated Software There’s a mountain of advice out there from the Internet, the IT guy in your office, and the It’s best to get the latest lady down the road in the tinfoil hat regarding proper maintenance of SSDs, and often their firmware for your SSD and insights are conflicting. Should you turn off the page file or not? Is Windows 7 using the Trim update your chipset drivers. command correctly, or do you need an extra software layer? We’re here to help. –Phil Iwanuik

Getting Started First, let’s establish what it means to that you’re running the disk in AHCI mode rather than IDE. “optimize” your SSD. Begin by forgetting those sequential Of these two standards, only the former enables SATA 3 1 read/write figures that manufacturers love to wheel out. They functionality. do so because a sequential-write time of 500MB/s sounds hella » Now that we’re out of the BIOS and into Windows, it’s impressive, whereas a random-write time of 24MB/s sounds a good idea to check that your chipset drivers are up to pretty pedestrian. date. Most mobo manufacturers will host a page containing Guess which type of task your disk completes most often? links to all the relevant firmware and drivers, and there’s a Correct, the random writes. You can check this for yourself by chance the latest driver increases performance. downloading Diskmon (http://bit.ly/1iSAiXv)—a program that tracks every task your disk does as you go about your business for a few hours. » Maximizing your random-read and -write times is a big part of SSD optimization, but it’s not the whole story. Flash memory Disable Unnecessary Windows Settings performance degrades over time, so it’s also important to ensure Windows does an assortment of background tasks you’re not thrashing your SSD unnecessarily. Windows 7 was de- that are unnecessary for SSD owners—scheduling signed before solid state became the norm, so by default it does a 3 disk defrags, creating system restore points, constantly number of things that are either superfluous or potentially dam- re-scanning data clusters so it can return search results aging to your storage. Windows 8 isn’t without its anachronisms quicker for you. It’s time to turn all that off, and give your in this area, either. drive some peace and quiet. » There are a couple of areas to focus on that’ll help to op- » Let’s start by disabling drive indexing, which does timize your disk: motherboard spec and BIOS settings are the nothing for your SSD’s response time, but increases starting point, followed by tweaks to your operating system. writes. From My Computer, right-click your drive and hit From there you can try to get additional optimization from Properties. At the very bottom is a checkbox that says third-party software. Let’s start with the nuts and bolts: getting “Allow files on this drive to have contents indexed.” Un- your mobo and its BIOS to play nice with your drive. check it (image A). Hit Ignore All on the error message and wait a moment for the process to complete. » While we’re in the neighborhood, stay in the Prop- erties window and select the Tools tab, then hit the De- fragment Now button. We’re not going to actually run a Check Compatibility and Drivers There’s an excellent defrag, now or ever; it does nothing to improve perfor- chance your SSD is SATA 3 compatible, which means its mance and thrashes your drive for no reason. Instead, 2 SATA port can throw data back and forth at a theoretical select Defragment Schedule and then uncheck any 6Gb/s. It’s therefore paramount to make sure your motherboard schedules lurking within (image B). That’s a load off your also supports this interface—ideally natively rather than using a SSD’s plate. third-party controller. It’s common in cheaper P67/Z68 chipsets » Next on the chopping block are prefetch and super- to find only a Marvell SATA 3 port on your mobo, and these really fetch—processes designed to speed up search results by, lower your performance ceiling. If you’re wondering why you can’t yes, constantly thrashing your storage. In the Start search replicate the advertised synthetic benchmarks, this is probably the bar, type regedit, and when the registry editor opens, find cause. On anything later than Intel’s Z68 platform there’s a bet- the following file path: HKEY_LOCAL_MACHINE\SYSTEM\ ter chance of finding native SATA 3 ports, and boards built around CurrentControlSet\Control\SessionManager\Memory AMD’s 9-series chipset regularly feature as many as six. Now the Management\PrefetchParameters. first potential bottleneck is cleared, enter your BIOS and check » Now, right-click both Superfetch and Prefetch to

62 MAXIMUMPC MAR 2014 maximumpc.com bring up their modify windows, then change their values C to 0 (image C). You’ll need to do a restart for the changes to take effect. Once that’s done, type services.msc into the Start search bar, then find both Superfetch and Win- dows Search and use their drop-down menus to set them to Disabled (image D). So long, super-thrasher. » If you’re feeling brave, you can disable the Recycle Bin, which helps the Trim command to do its thing and keeps the maximum possible disk space free. Just don’t come crying to us if you delete something important. Right-click the Recycle Bin, then hit Properties, select D your SSD and hit “Don’t move files to the Recycle Bin” (image E). » With Windows no longer beating your SSD like it’s wearing a bow tie on its first day of school, all that’s left is to boost your startup time. Type msconfig into Start search bar, then in the Boot tab, tick No GUI Boot to dis- able the Windows graphic and cut seconds off your boot time (image F). Untick any unwelcome programs in the Startup tab, too. » With your BIOS and OS now tailored to your SSD’s needs, you have created an environment in which it can perform random-read/write tasks as fast as possible but, crucially, only when those tasks are necessary. It’s a win- win: lightning performance when you need it, with the lon- gest possible lifespan. If you want to take it even further, there are options with third-party software, but by getting Windows in order and eliminating the possibility of a hard- ware bottleneck, you’ve done your drive a solid.

E A

F B

maximumpc.com MAR 2014 MAXIMUMPC 63 R&D

Edit Photos with Gimp

You’ll need this Even beautiful photographs can often be improved with some subtle editing tweaks. You can spend a small fortune on suitable software, but a free, open-source tool called Gimp includes Gimp nearly all the features you’d find in a professional package. This free, open-source photo- Whether you just want to crop an image or resize it for emailing, Gimp can help you do it editing suite is available at quickly and easily. It’s also great for boosting color saturation or brightening murky shadow www.gimp.org. areas, and with a little practice you can even edit out unattractive elements from an image, such as a piece of litter or a facial imperfection. Gimp is packed with useful and fun tools to turn a dull vacation snap into a masterpiece, and while some features can be a little tricky to learn, the results will be worth the effort. It’s also easy to use—with our help you won’t feel intimidated by a huge array of options and complicated tools. So, without further ado, let’s get editing! –Ben Andrews

Correcting Verticals and Cropping First, we like to H customize Gimp’s tool palettes to suit our working style. By 1 default, these float in separate Windows, but to combine them with the image window, click the Windows tab on the top toolbar and select Single-Window Mode. Open your photo via the usual File > Open procedure and hit Ctrl + Shift + J to automatically zoom the image preview to fill the window space (image G). » See those leaning wooden pillars on the left of the building? Let’s correct these converging verticals by first creating some vertical reference lines. Click anywhere on the ruler located to the left of the image and drag it right, dropping a line roughly two inches from the right edge of the image. Now, drag a second line and drop it among the wooden pillars on the left. » Press Shift + P to activate the Perspective tool (image H). En- sure the Clipping option on the left is set to Adjust, then click-and- drag the lower-left corner of the image directly to the right until the leaning pillars stand parallel with the left-hand reference line. Drag the bottom-right corner roughly the same distance to the left, then click the Transform button in the small pop-up window. I » To restore the rectangular framing, switch to the cropping tool by pressing Shift + C, then click the bottom-left corner of the image and drag up to the top-right to make a box that includes as much of the photo as possible while still excluding the diagonal edges (image I). Double-click inside the box to apply the crop, then resize the image preview again by clicking Ctrl + Shift + J.

G

Color Adjustments Landscape photos can often look hazy, with dull color saturation. We’ll address 2 this by clicking the Colors tab and selecting Levels. Notice the black-and-white Input Levels histogram graph and the three small triangle markers directly beneath it? Drag the left and right triangles so they line up with their respective ends of the black graph shape (image J), then click OK. » Next, those dark shadows need brightening up. Back

64 MAXIMUMPC MAR 2014 maximumpc.com on the Colors tab, opt for Curves. Click roughly a quarter Advanced Editing Let’s try digitally uprooting that small up the long diagonal line and drag it straight up approxi- sign in front of the building. Press C to switch to the Clone mately two squares of the background grid. Now, click the 3 Stamp tool, then tap 2 to zoom in to 200 percent for a better same distance from the other end of our curve and drag view. Find the sign by holding down Space and clicking-and-drag- back down to the original straight line (image K), restor- ging the image. Position the cursor so the dotted circle is centered ing the highlight areas to their previous brightness. on the bottom-right corner of the wooden pillar, just to the right » Now we’re getting somewhere! However, the area of of the sign. blue sky is still slightly dull. You can increase the satura- » Press and hold Ctrl, click once, release Ctrl, and align the tion of this specific area by clicking the Colors tab again cursor as best you can in the equivalent position over the pillar and selecting Hue-Saturation from the menu. In the new behind the sign. Click, drag, and paint over the sign (image M). To window, choose the blue color (not cyan) and slide the remove the sign’s pole, find a new reference point that’s about an bottom Saturation slider all the way to the right (image L). inch to the left or right of the pole and again press Ctrl and click. Click OK to apply the changes. Move your mouse to the matching position on the pole and paint it out. J » To save your completed image, ignore the obvious Save op- tion on the File tab and instead select Export. Name your file something different from the original, click Export, and ensure the Quality slider is set to 90 or higher (image N). Finally, click Export again to complete the save. Now you can sit back, flick between the original and edited images, and admire what you’ve achieved!

M

K

N

L

maximumpc.com MAR 2014 MAXIMUMPC 65 R&D

Tom McNamara ASSOCIATE EDITOR Installing SteamOS on Your PC There’s no need to wait for companies to start selling pre- built Steam Machines when you can put SteamOS on your PC today—follow along as we load it onto last month's Build It rig

Length of time: 1–2 HourS LEVEL OF DIFFICULTY: Medium

The Mission If you're a PC gamer, you probably noticed that Valve distribution, so it’s a free alternative to Windows, and it’s designed Software and Microsoft aren't BFFs these days. Valve uses its own to run on pre-built Steam Machines, which are console-size and Steam software client to deliver thousands of games to PC gamers due this year. However, it will run on any current PC, so we figured around the world, and it is probably concerned that at some point we’d take it for a spin this month to see how it feels. We did it Microsoft is going to want a piece of the action, just like how Apple because, aside from the joy of tinkering, SteamOS runs a surpris- takes a percentage for each sale via iTunes. Valve is apparently ingly large number of games, and one day it will be able to stream so concerned with the direction it thinks Microsoft is headed that games to your TV from a computer. To satisfy our curiosity, we de- it’s gone to the trouble of building an entirely new operating sys- cided to install the SteamOS on a DIY machine we had in the Lab. tem just for its Steam client, and dubbed it SteamOS. It's a Linux

66 MAXIMUMPC MAR 2014 maximumpc.com Laying Pipe We were not among the 300 lucky SOBs who scored a Steam Ma- 1 chine direct from Valve for beta testing, so we installed SteamOS on Downloading the Package a machine we created in last month’s Build It. SteamOS only runs on Nvidia video cards at press time, though, so we swapped the sys- Download the 950MB installer package from Valve's serv- tem's AMD Radeon R9 290X for a GeForce GTX 780. Since this Build ers at http://repo.steampowered.com/download. There are It is focused on software rather than hardware, we'll skip the usual torrents floating around, but none are officially approved. components chart and just give you a quick rundown right here. Our The SteamOS installer download is a ZIP file instead of the box has an Intel Core-i7-4770K, 16GB of DDR3 RAM, a "gold"-rated ISO that you'd usually use to install an operating system. You 550W Seasonic power supply with modular cables, and a 256GB can create an ISO from this package and burn it to disc, but a SSD and 1TB Black. SteamOS requires a motherboard that uses lot of people (including ourselves) experience difficulty doing UEFI and a 64-bit CPU. Valve recommends at least 4GB of RAM and this, so we instead extracted the files to a USB key. Be sure to 500GB of storage space. Some familiarity with Linux is also helpful, back up any important data on your flash drive, because you’ll but it's not required. To install SteamOS, we'll also need a USB flash need to format it as FAT32 for the installation (most USB keys drive, preferably 4GB or larger. And this is very important: Just like default to this file type during formatting). Just open Windows with Windows, whatever drive you install SteamOS to will be format- Explorer, right-click your flash drive's icon, select Format, ted during the installation, so if you are looking to dual-boot you will make sure the file system is set to FAT32, and click the button want to keep that OS on a different partition or drive altogether. In labeled Start. When the installer is done downloading, extract fact, we recommend disconnecting the device with Windows on it it to the USB stick. while installing SteamOS, just to be safe. Also, the build of SteamOS that we used does not have a complete audio package. The only way to get sound is over an HDMI cable, either to a receiver or a flat- panel display with integrated speakers.

2 Extraction Begins

Windows has built-in ZIP file extraction these days, so you can just double-click on the freshly downloaded file to view its contents, hit Ctrl + A to select everything, Ctrl + C to copy it all, then double-click your flash drive in Windows Explorer, and press Ctrl + V to begin the transfer. It's a large file, so that could take 15 minutes to half an hour, depending on the speed of your CPU and whether you're using USB 3.0 or 2.0. While the files are 3 being extracted and copied over, we recommend digging up your Begin the Install motherboard manual or looking online to find out which button to press on boot to access a Boot Selection menu so that you The actual installation of SteamOS is pretty easy, since it's can boot from the USB key. It’s usually F12, but varies by mobo. almost entirely automated. Just shut down your system, detach Also, we recommend installing Steam to a mechanical hard your Windows drive, plug in the USB key with SteamOS on it, drive as SSD optimization in Linux can get complicated if you're start your PC again, and press your motherboard's preferred not familiar with the OS. If you want to take a stab at it though, key for accessing the boot menu. This should list your flash drive here’s the official guide: http://bit.ly/1aralb1. with a "UEFI" tag at the front. Choose that, select Automated Install from the next menu, and go grab a bite to eat because it will take about 30 minutes to install on a mechanical hard drive.

maximumpc.com MAR 2014 MAXIMUMPC 67 R&D

4 Get to Know Linux 6 Opening the Valve

While the OS is installing we’d recommend taking some “me time” Once the post-install script has completed, reboot the system, and you to check out some basic Linux commands and concepts, if you're not will be launched directly into Steam's Big Picture mode. To get back to already familiar with them. SteamOS is a variant of Debian (version 7, the desktop, click the Exit button and select "Return to Desktop." The code-name "Wheezy"), so Googling the latter will give you info on the screen will go dark for a few seconds, and you'll be back in the Gnome former. SteamOS also uses the Gnome Shell for its desktop environ- Shell. There will be an icon on the desktop that you can click to return to ment, and that comes with a set of keyboard shortcuts that are handy to Big Picture mode. At this stage, you may need to re-create your account have at your fingertips. The makers of Gnome keep a cheat sheet here: password to correctly establish admin privileges. In a terminal window, http://bit.ly/1grDW8V. Most of them will be familiar to Windows veterans. type passwd desktop, and type in whatever new password you desire. That will allow you to use "sudo" commands, which temporarily give you administrator privileges for things like installing software or accessing system-wide settings.

5 You Have Arrived 7 Hissing Noises

Once SteamOS has installed, it will prompt you to reboot your PC. At You may have issues getting audio to work. At press time, there the login screen, the user name is steam, and the password is steam. was a bug that muted several outputs, and the built-in audio panel You can change this later. Note the drop-down menu right below the did not display those outputs. As a work-around, we had to manually password field. Selecting SteamOS will launch you directly into Steam's install a third-party panel that shows everything. ALSA Mixer is one Big Picture mode, which uses an interface designed for living room TVs such program, but we want the one specifically built for Debian. To set about 10 feet away from the user. Default Xsession will give you the get that, go to desktop mode, open the Applications menu, select Gnome Shell desktop instead. We're not sure if this menu will even be Iceweasel, and go to this address: http://packages.debian.org/wheezy/ accessible once SteamOS is out of its beta phase, but you should take a alsa-utils. Scroll down to the bottom, click AMD64, and choose your look at Gnome, now that it's actually on your computer. The first order download location. Once that's finished, open the terminal and type cd of business is to finish the install, via the command-line terminal. Select Downloads. Then type sudo dpkg -i alsa-utils_1.0.25-4_amd64.deb. Activities in the upper left-hand corner of the screen, choose Applications, Now type alsamixer in the terminal to bring up the new audio panel. and click Terminal. Type su desktop, use desktop as your password, Use the F6 key to cycle through your available audio outputs. Arrow type ./post_logon.sh, and hit the Y key to confirm a series of automated keys cycle through each audio channel, and M toggles the mute. If steps. You can also open the terminal by pressing Alt-F2, typing gnome- that doesn't work, you should at least be able to get audio over HDMI, terminal and hitting Enter. Alt-F2 is basically like Windows's Run dialog. either through integrated TV speakers or a home theater receiver.

68 MAXIMUMPC MAR 2014 maximumpc.com 1 2 3 4

1. The Activities menu in the 2. The available commands 3. The Iceweasel Internet 4. To shut down, you need to upper left is a hot corner for the Linux terminal are so browser bundled in SteamOS click the upper right-hand (opens when you hover your extensive that many power is too outdated for day-to-day menu and press the Alt key. mouse over it) that shows users don't even have a desk- use; we recommend using the you both running apps and top environment. Steam client's own browser. installed apps.

Getting on the Train

Once we had SteamOS up and running, the first order of business was Mark of the Ninja, Fez, Football Manager 2014, and Monaco. DOTA 2, one seeing what applications were available in the package and from the of the most popular games in the world, will also be available on SteamOS. repositories, or "repos." Unfortunately, it's pretty bare-bones. There's no Unfortunately for AMD users, SteamOS uses Nvidia's proprietary drivers, word processor, image editor, email client, or media player, for example. so you can’t run an AMD GPU at this time. With Debian, this is usually not a big deal, since it has literally thousands of We also dual-booted with Windows, which was simple since our test bench packages in its repos that are just a few clicks away from installation. But had Windows installed on the SSD and SteamOS on the hard drive. We just SteamOS doesn't point to Debian's servers, and there's no way to force it selected our boot device during startup and were back in Windows-ville. to. And they're two different distributions anyway, so you could get hit with You can also go into the board's BIOS and tell it to boot to a specific drive incompatibilities and errors even if you could. Therefore, SteamOS, or at every time, instead of manually selecting from the boot menu. It's not as least this version of it, does not look like it's meant to replace Windows. clean as getting the Linux boot loader to just "see" Windows and add it to It's a stripped-down gaming platform. You can always install packages on its own boot menu, but it's close enough for our needs. your own, or build from source, but that's not nearly as much fun. Overall, we’re not sure at this time if running SteamOS is worth the With nearly 100 of our 289 Steam games compatible with Linux, however, effort, since you can get Steam for Ubuntu and other Linux distros, where including nearly all of Valve's titles (though Counter-Strike: Global Offensive you'll get access to repos and the ability to dual-boot. It’s fun to play with is a prominent exception), it's a pretty good gaming platform. Metro: Last though, so if you have a spare drive and some time you should check it out. Light is also getting bundled with retail Steam Machines, and a quick scan If you’re on Windows though, don’t worry—you’re not missing anything. of our personal library also included popular titles like Starbound, Bastion,

maximumpc.com MAR 2014 MAXIMUMPC 69 GUESS WHAT

JUNOPOWER www.istaycharged.com

JUNOPOWER IS A BRAND OF JUNO LABS LLC. JUNO LABS LLC IS MANUFACTURED BY RVIXE USA. SHOP NOW AT WWW.JUNOPOWER.COM reviews of the latest hardware and software in the lab

TESTED. REVIEWED. VERDICTIzED.

inside 72 AVADirect Mini Gaming PC 74 Sapphire Tri-X Radeon R9 290X 76 Gigabyte GeForce GTX 780 GHz Edition 78 Toshiba Qosmio X75 Gaming Notebook 80 Antec Kuhler H20 950 82 WD Black2 SSD+HDD 84 Acer Aspire S7 Ultrabook 86 Dream Machine Redux: Cooler Master Cosmos SE, Corsair 750D 88 Neat Company NeatConnect 89 The Walking Dead: Season Two 90 Lab Notes

AvaDirect Mini Gaming PC page 72

maximumpc.com MAR 2014 MAXIMUMPC 71 in the lab

Though capable and reasonably priced, this medium form factor is eclipsed by smaller, faster, and cheaper machines.

72 MAXIMUMPC MAR 2014 maximumpc.com AVADirect Mini Cube Gaming PC Just call it ‘The Fridge’

Naming a PC isn’t an easy task. It’s hard also find a liquid-cooled Core i7-4770K itor, keyboard, mouse, and new suit and enough when you’re talking about your overclocked to 4.2GHz, 16GB of Kingston shoes, too. But then there’s CyberPower personal PC (Betsy, Svetlana, or Jabba DDR3/1600, two Kingston 120GB HyperX PC’s Hadron Hydro 300, which costs $300 work well), but when you’re a company SSDs in RAID 0, a 2TB WD HDD, an MSI less than the AVADirect . It almost mir- selling a new model, Marketing 101 says Z87 Mini-ITX board, and an Asus GeForce rors the parts in the AVADirect except for the name should imbue magic and con- GTX 780 card. the HDD. The Hadron also packs custom vince consumers to pony up. Against our zero-point system, the liquid-cooling for its CPU and GPU, which, We’re guessing AVADirect didn’t take AVADirect represents well in the non- while the chassis gets a tad warm, helps that class, as its new custom mini-cube heavily multithreaded tasks but, not the rig run extremely quietly and gives it gaming PC is apparently named Mini Cube surprisingly, it gets left behind in all a slight performance edge. The AVADirect Gaming PC. The truth is, AVADirect prob- other tests by the ZP’s six-core Core i7- box is louder and under heavy loads emits ably doesn’t give a damn about the name 3930K part clicking along at 3.8GHz. That a low-frequency large-fan buzz. because frankly, who cares? Maybe “5S” includes gaming tests, but not by the That leaves the AVADirect in a tough or “S IV” works on some people, but on a margin you would expect from the zero- spot. It’s slower than the Tiki and more custom PC where you pick out the parts point’s GeForce GTX 690. expensive than the Hadron. Yes, it’s got yourself, it’s probably far less pressing. The more important question is how an off-the-shelf PSU, but we’re not sure Around the office, we’ve taken to calling The Fridge compares with the SFF/micro- that’s worth the sacrifice in size. Yes, it’s this handsome SFF machine “The Fridge,” tower crowd. Not too shabby. The bad a striking-looking case with its brushed- not necessarily because of its size, but be- mutha of the group continues to be Fal- steel/aluminum finish, but maybe the sun cause of its Frigidaire-like aesthetic. Sure, con Northwest’s Tiki, with its Haswell is just finally starting to set on the medi- it would have been cool if the optical drive part overclocked to 4.7GHz and a GeForce um form factor. –Gordon Mah Ung shared the same brushed-aluminum sur- Titan. Indeed, the Tiki still stands as the face, but it still matches the black accents fastest micro-tower we’ve ever tested, elsewhere on the case. While there’s no and the fact that it’s held onto that title question that this is a small form factor well into the new year demonstrates how rig, compared to the micro-towers we’ve aggressively Falcon went for broke with seen lately, it’s pretty big. It’s more than this model. Of course, that aggression verdict AVADirect Mini Cube Gaming PC double the width of the Falcon Northwest comes at a price, with the Tiki hitting the Tiki, and while slightly shorter than the $4,400 mark. At $2,583, AVADirect can Thermaflu Brushed-steel CyberPower Hadron we reviewed in Feb- pull the old, “You can buy our system, play 7 look; full-size optical drive; ruary, it’s about three inches wider than all of your games, and still have enough moderate cost. that machine. money to buy two of the upcoming cheap Thermal Detonator Not as fast nor as That size increase gives it more capa- 4K panels” routine. quiet as smaller machines. bility. While most micro-towers use SFX Normally, that routine would sway us, or 1U PSUs, The Fridge uses a standard because like most folks, we can see sacri- $2,584, www.avadirect.com 760W Seasonic ATX PSU. Inside, you’ll ficing a little performance for a new mon-

Benchmarks Zero SPECIFICATIONS point Premiere Pro CS6 (sec) 2,000 2,456 (-19%) Processor Core i7-4770K @ 4.2GHz Mobo MSI Z87I Stitch.Efx 2.0 (sec) 831 763 RAM 16GB Kingston HyperX Beast ProShow Producer 5.0 (sec) 1,446 1,284 DDR3/1600 x264 HD 5.0 (fps) 21.1 18.5 (-13%) Graphics Asus GeForce GTX 780

Batman: Arkham City (fps) 76 71 (-7%) Storage 2x Kingston 120GB HyperX in RAID 0, 2TB Western Digital 3DMark 11 5,847 4,628 (-21%) Black 0% 10% 20% 30% 40% 50% 60% 70% 80% 90% 100% Optical LG BH16NS40

Our current desktop test bed consists of a hexa-core 3.2GHz Core i7-3930K 3.8GHz, 8GB of Corsair DDR3/1600, on an Asus Sabertooth Case/PSU Lian Li PC-Q28B / 760 watt X79 motherboard. We are running a GeForce GTX 690, an OCZ Vertex 3 SSD, and 64-bit Windows 7 Professional. Seasonic Platinum

maximumpc.com MAR 2014 MAXIMUMPC 73 in the lab

The Tri-X throws off AMD’s meh cooler.

74 MAXIMUMPC MAR 2014 maximumpc.com Sapphire Tri-X Radeon R9 290X A real gem of a GPU

For those who haven’t kept up with cur- it a card that addresses every single one of amazed to see it hit 1,040MHz under load, rent events: Late last year AMD launched our complaints about the reference design and stay there throughout testing. Even its all-new Hawaii GPUs, starting with its from AMD. There is one caveat: price. The more surprising were the temps we were flagship Radeon R9 290X that featured a Sapphire card is $50 more expensive than seeing. Since the reference card hits 94 C blower-type cooler designed by AMD. In the reference card at $600, but you are all day long, this is obviously a really hot testing, it ran hotter than any GPU we’ve obviously getting quite a bit of additional GPU, but the Sapphire Tri-X cooler was ever tested, hitting 94 C at full load, which horsepower for your ducats. holding it down at a chilly 75 C. The card is about 20 C higher than normal. AMD as- Compared to the reference card, the was whisper-quiet too, which was also a sured everyone this was no problemo, and Sapphire board is one-half inch longer, pleasant surprise given the noise level of that the board was designed to run those so it’s a lengthy 12 inches, making it the the reference cooler. We were also able to temps until the meerkats came home. It longest GPU we have in the Lab currently. overclock it to 1,113MHz, which is a turn- was stable at 94 C, but the GPU throttled The PCB design is the same as a refer- around in that we could not overclock the performance at those temps. The stock fan ence board, so nothing has changed on reference board at all since it throttles at was also a bit loud at max revs, so though that front, making the only significant dif- stock settings. the card offered kick-ass performance, it ference the cooler. The clock speeds have So, we know the card is quiet, runs cool, was clearly being held back by the refer- increased a bit on this model, with a maxi- and can overclock, but the real question ence cooler. mum of 1,040MHz compared to 1,000MHz is whether or not it’s worth the extra $50 Therefore, we all eagerly awaited the on the reference card (which was actually over the reference card. To that question, arrival of cards with aftermarket coolers, in the low 900MHz range typically). Sap- our answer is a resounding yes in all caps and this month we received the first af- phire also boosted the memory speed along with a smiley emoticon for those termarket Radeon R9 290X—the massive a tiny bit to 5,200MHz, which is 200MHz who can’t understand emotion anymore. In triple-fan Tri-X model from Sapphire; and faster overall than the reference board. our tests it was not only much faster than we must say, all of our Radeon prayers Otherwise it has the same 4GB of memory, the reference card due to its overall higher have been answered by this card. the same 6-pin and 8-pin power connec- clock speed (thanks to superior cooling), Not only does it run totally cool and qui- tors, and the same overall TDP of around but it’s so quiet and cool that it’s much et at all times, but because it runs so chilly 300 watts or so. easier to live with, and you can overclock it has plenty of room to overclock, making When we first fired it up, we were it to achieve even greater performance gains. Whether or not it’s worth an extra $100 over a GTX 780 is a more difficult SPECIFICATIONS question, but the Sapphire Tri-X R9 290X is the best AMD card we have ever tested.

Sapphire Tri-X AMD Radeon R9 Gigabyte GeForce We’re taking off one point though, because Radeon R9 290X 290X Reference GTX 780 GHz most of the Nvidia add-in board vendors Driver 13.12 13.12 331.82 charge only $10 or $20 more than a refer- 3DMark Fire Strike 9,820 9,737 9,695 ence card for extravagant cooling, so $50 seems like a bit much. –Josh Norem Unigine Heaven 4.0 (fps) 33 32 39 Unigine Valley 1.0 (fps) 40 36 47 Call of Duty: Ghosts (fps) 44 47 53 Crysis 3 (fps) 30 28 30 Far Cry 3 (fps) 39 31 44 verdict Sapphire Tri-X Radeon R9 Tomb Raider (fps) 26 27 25 290X Metro: Last Light (fps) 26 17 25 Battlefield 4 (fps) 46 45 47 9 Three Xs Runs cool; very Batman: Arkham Origins (fps) 46 51 51 quiet; overclocks well. Assassin's Creed: Black Flag (fps) 30 30 30 One R A bit pricey com- pared to reference. Best scores are bolded. Our test bed is a 3.33GHz Core i7 3960X Extreme Edition in an Asus Rampage IV Extreme motherboard with 16GB of DDR3/1600 and a Thermaltake ToughPower 1,050W PSU. The OS is 64-bit Windows 8. All games are run at 2560x1600 with 4x AA except for the 3DMark tests. $600, www.sapphiretech.com

maximumpc.com MAR 2014 MAXIMUMPC 75 in the lab

This bad boy boosted to almost 1,200MHz Gigabyte GeForce right out of the box. GTX 780 GHz Edition Ready to put the Hert(z) on AMD It can get a bit confusing in the video card ployed its highly effective WindForce triple- power connectors instead of a 6-pin and an world, what with the similar names for all fan cooling solution. We’ve seen this cooler 8-pin, which helps it achieve those higher the cards and the subtle differences among before on the company’s higher-spec’d GTX clocks and remain stable at higher frequen- models. Things just got more confusing this 780 Ti, so we know it allows for silent opera- cies. Finally, it features a metal back-and- month with the release of the Gigabyte GTX tion and impressive overclocking. The GTX side plate that wraps around the card on all 780 GHz Edition, which was a special desig- 780 is in the middle of a price war with AMD’s sides, which isn’t something we’ve seen be- nation previously used for AMD cards. Since new R9 GPUs, so it has to keep costs down fore on an aftermarket card. The GHz edition AMD has abandoned the GHz tag, however, in order to remain competitive. The R9 290 card is one-half inch longer than the stock Gigabyte figured it would adopt it and attach is generally faster than the GTX 780 in stock card at 11 inches, and costs about $40 more it to a superclocked version of the vener- trim, so the GHz edition is a response to that than the reference design. able GTX 780. Whereas the standard GTX card, but since it’s priced at $540 it’s primed For our testing, we compared the card to 780 comes with a base clock of just 863MHz to take on the R9 290X, as well. a stock GTX 780 as well as the king of GTX and a boost clock of 900MHz, the GHz edi- Compared to the stock GTX 780, the GHz 780s—the EVGA GTX 780 ACX, which re- tion comes with a base clock of—can you edition has the aforementioned higher clocks ceived a perfect 10/Kick Ass verdict in our guess?—1,019MHz and a boost clock of as well as a fully custom PCB that includes October issue. We also tossed it in the ring 1,071MHz. That’s quite an overclock right out an eight-phase power design for more sta- with a stock AMD Radeon R9 290 and an R9 of the box, and to achieve it Gigabyte has de- ble overclocking. It also features two 8-pin 290X, since they are all in the same GPU ballpark. When compared to the Radeon cards, the GHz edition board ate their lunch, Benchmarks which is a turnaround from what we’ve seen before, where the cards were neck-and-

AMD neck in testing. The GTX 780 GHz even beat Gigabyte GeForce EVGA Radeon Radeon the more expensive Radeon R9 290X in seven GeForce GTX GTX 780 GTX 780 R9 290 R9 290X out of 11 of our tests, and simply crushed the 780 GHz (Reference) ACX (Reference) (Reference) Radeon R9 290 in all but two tests. Since the Driver 331.82 331.58 320.49 13.11 13.11 Radeon cards are hard to find and priced ac- 3DMark Fire Strike 9,695 8,309 9,607 9,108 9,737 cordingly, the regular 290 is now more than

Unigine Heaven 4.0 $500, so choosing between it and the 780 (fps) 39 33 40 30 33 GHz edition is a no-brainer, as the 780 wins every time. Choosing between the Gigabyte Unigine Valley 1.0 (fps) 47 38 53 36 36 card and the EVGA card is more difficult Call of Duty: Ghosts though, as the EVGA card is about $10 less (fps) 53 45 51 41 47 expensive, so flip a coin because they are Crysis 3 (fps) 30 24 27 25 28 both superb. –Josh Norem Far Cry 3 (fps) 44 21 42 25 31

Tomb Raider (fps) 25 20 25 27 27

Metro: Last Light (fps) 25 20 24 10 17 Gigabyte GeForce GTX 780 GHz Edition Battlefield 4 (fps) 47 46 45 41 45 9 Windforce Excellent per- Batman: Arkham Origins (fps) 51 43 49 50 51 formance; back-and-side plate; very quiet and cool. Assassin's Creed: Black Flag (fps) 30 46 34 30 30 Breezeforce A little expen-

Best scores are bolded. Our test bed is a 3.33GHz Core i7 3960X Extreme Edition in an Asus Rampage IV Extreme motherboard sive compared to the EVGA card. with 16GB of DDR3/1600 and a Thermaltake ToughPower 1,050W PSU. The OS is 64-bit Windows 8. All games are run at 2560x1600 with 4X AA except for the 3DMark tests. $540 (street), www.gigabyte.us

76 MAXIMUMPC MAR 2014 maximumpc.com MAXIMUM PC AT ITS BEST ANYTIME, ANYWHERE!

Print or Digital subscriptions available! www.maximumpc.com/anywhere in the lab Toshiba Qosmio X75 Lots of graphical horsepower at a reasonable price It’s been a while since we reviewed a Toshi- horizontal grooves above the left and right most likely going to use it as a desktop re- ba gaming notebook, so we couldn’t wait to mouse clickers providing a suitable substi- placement, thus battery life isn’t really an get our hands on the company’s new Qosmio tute for separate buttons. In addition, the issue. And while its CPU performance is a X75. Unlike iBuypower’s super-slim and trackpad is ample at 4.5x3.2 inches, highly little disappointing, the Qosmio X75 offers a portable 17-inch Battalion M1771 gaming responsive, and supports multitouch ges- lot of performance as a gaming laptop for a notebook we reviewed last issue, the Qos- tures. The keyboard is also equally compe- very fair price. While our build cost $1,800, mio X75 puts power ahead of portability. tent, although we do wish the arrow keys foregoing a Blu-ray drive and reducing the With a body measuring 16.5x10.7x1.7 were full-size as opposed to half-size. memory to 8GB of RAM (which is more than inches and weighing more than seven Inside the chassis, the Qosmio sports a enough for gaming) could save $275, bring- pounds, the X75 is definitely in desktop- quad-core 2.4GHz 4700MQ CPU, a GeForce ing the total to a little over $1,500. When replacement territory. The chassis is clad GTX 770M, and 16GB of memory. For stor- you also consider the fact that you can eas- in black textured aluminum, with lots of red age, it has a 256GB mSATA SSD coupled with ily pop open the bottom of the laptop for accenting, such as the shiny red trim around a 1TB hard drive. The laptop has a 47Wh swapping out RAM and storage (without the body and the trackpad, the red LED key- 8-cell battery. voiding the warranty), the Qosmio X75 turns board backlighting, and the glowing red Qos- When it was time to perform, Toshiba’s out to be a great deal for enthusiasts, par- mio logo on the lid. It all serves to add a bit of laptop killed it in the gaming department, ticularly gamers. –Jimmy Thang flash to an otherwise subtle aesthetic. but was average everywhere else. We had A couple aspects we don’t like are the never reviewed a gaming laptop with a 770M 4-pin power connector, which necessitates before, and found that it had no issues kick- precise orientation of the plug. We’re also ing the crap out of the more mobile-oriented not crazy about the exhaust fan’s location 765M GPU in our Alienware 14 zero-point rig, verdict Toshiba Qosmio X75 on the right edge, which could mean warm thanks in no small part to its 3GB of GDDR5 wrists for right-handers during heavy play memory. We’re talking performance advan- Shiba Lots of storage; pow- sessions. While it never got uncomfortably tages of 17–66 percent in the gaming tests. 9 erful GPU; excellent speakers; hot, we would have preferred a rear exhaust. The Qosmio couldn’t quite keep up with our good trackpad; fair price. On the bright side, the Qosmio’s display is zero-point in our CPU-intensive bench- Shih Tzu Heat exhaust is aimed at right one of the best TN panels we’ve seen, with marks, however, losing by roughly 3–8 per- hand; annoying power plug; CPU perfor- fantastic viewing angles and a vibrant 1080p cent. While those aren’t huge losses, it’s still mance is disappointing. glossy display, which didn’t suffer from the a little disappointing given that both laptops usual glare problem. We also had no qualms use the same Intel processor. We suspect $1,800, www.toshiba.com with the laptop’s quad Harman/Kardon that Toshiba is throttling the CPU to avoid speakers, which sounded clear and power- thermal issues. Thankfully, the laptop never ful. As a matter of fact, we can confidently got hot, so we didn’t hear much fan noise. say that these are some of the best laptop The laptop’s biggest failing actually speakers we’ve heard. came by way of battery life, which isn’t a The trackpad is similarly praise-worthy. big surprise from a machine of this size. In While we normally harp on trackpads that our video rundown test, the Qosmio lasted don’t feature two dedicated buttons, the Qos- two hours and 20 minutes. If you’re inter- mio’s uniform expanse is easy to use, with ested in getting a laptop this large, you’re SIAPECIF C TIONS

CPU 2.4GHz Intel Core i7-4700MQ Benchmarks RAM 16GB DDR3L/1600 Zero- Chipset Intel HM87 point GPU Nvidia GeForce GTX 770M 3GB Stitch.Efx 2.0 (sec) 962 993 (-3.1%) GDDR5 ProShow Producer 5 (sec) 1,629 1,716 (-5.1%) Display 17.3-inch 1920x1080 LED x264 HD 5.0 (fps) 13.5 12.4 (-8.1%) display (glossy) Storage 256GB SSD, 1TB HDD BioShock Infinite (fps) 36.1 47.19 Optical Drive Blu-ray burner Metro Last Light (fps) 30.4 50.67 Connectivity Ethernet, VGA, HDMI, all-in- 3DMark 11 Perf 4,170 4,888 one card reader, 4x USB 3.0, Battery Life (min) 234 140 (-40.2%) headphone, mic, 2MP webcam, 0% 10% 20% 30% 40% 50% 60% 70% 80% 90% 100% Bluetooth, 802.11n Our zero-point notebook is an Alienware 14 with a 2.4GHz Intel Core i7-4700MQ, 16GB DDR3/1600, 256GB mSATA SSD, 750GB 5,400rpm Lap / Carry 7 lbs, 3.7 oz / 9 lbs, 8.8 oz HDD, a GeForce GTX 765M, and Windows 7 Home Premium 64-bit. BioShock Infinite tested at 1920x1080 at Ultra DX11 settings; Metro Last Light tested at 1920x1080 at DX11 medium quality settings with PhysX disabled.

78 MAXIMUMPC MAR 2014 maximumpc.com Go with 8GB of RAM and forego the Blu-ray drive to save $300.

maximumpc.com MAR 2014 MAXIMUMPC 79 in the lab

Despite its mass, this cooler fit in our test bed, as long we installed it in the rear and not the top.

80 MAXIMUMPC MAR 2014 maximumpc.com Antec Kuhler H20 950 A sizeable quandary

Re-engineering computer hardware is an brother. The whole assembly cleared the Since the design of the cooler is so uncon- expensive and time-consuming process. large heatsinks on our Asus Rampage IV ventional, it’s difficult to define the source That’s why the technology usually evolves Extreme motherboard, which is not known of these underwhelming results. On the gradually, rather than in fits and starts; for modesty. Our tall and fancy-looking plus side, the fans had pretty good noise great leaps are risky. When you do some- sticks of RAM also had plenty of room. levels; once the side panel was on, we thing novel, it needs to be for a good rea- The 950’s immobile pipes that go from the could barely hear the 950’s fans, as long son. When Antec recently introduced two pump to the rad partially obstructed one of as we weren’t running them full-tilt. We new types of coolers, the Kuhler 1250 and the screw holes on the CPU tray bracket, don’t measure noise scientifically, though, the 950, it did something pretty different. but we were able to angle it in after some so your mileage may vary. In a closed-loop liquid-cooling (CLC) sys- fiddling. (Pro tip: Don’t fully insert your The difference between this and, say, an tem, the pump is customarily integrated screws until all four corners of the bracket NZXT X60 is only a few degrees Celsius. In into the heatsink that sits on top of the are attached.) the real world, you may never take advan- CPU. But with this new series of Kuhler So far, so good. Next is the cabling. tage of that additional edge. Every buyer, units, Antec has moved the pump on top Like the 1250, it’s all integrated into the however, will need to deal with the 950’s of the fan, which it uses to power the heatsink—if you don’t mind using only the somewhat-awkward installation and non- pump. The 950 ups the ante even further bundled “Grid” fan control software to re- removable fan. In the end, the 950 does by putting a fan on each side of the radia- port your temps and speeds. We needed some interesting things, but it doesn’t tor, making it a truly bulky piece of equip- our usual testing tools, so we had to grab quite have the performance to make up for ment. Always happy to see an innovative a Y-splitter to connect the unit’s two fans its quirks. –Tom McNamara design, we hoped that perhaps the 950 to one motherboard fan header, in addi- would excel where the 1250 (reviewed tion to testing with the official installation last issue) was just OK for the price. method. When we linked the fans to the Looking through the documentation and motherboard, though, Grid could no lon- the marketing materials, one does not find ger “see” the fans. This either-or scenario bold claims of breakthrough performance is a bit vexing, but not a deal-breaker. verdict Antec Kuhler H20 950 or whisper-quiet operation. Antec does not Most people should be fine with Grid. You appear to assert any advantage over other can install it from the CD in the retail box, Gold Fits better than CLCs. But one look at the pictures, and or download it from the product page on 7 expected; easy cabling. it’s pretty clear that this guy wants a bold Antec’s website. Pyrite So-so performance; fiddly amount of real estate inside your PC. Iron- In terms of raw performance, the 950 installation. ically, though, despite having one fan on did not fare as well as we hoped. It regular- either side of the rad (which itself is 50mm ly outpaced the best air coolers, but it also $100, www.antec.com thick, twice the usual), we found the 950 ran consistently behind top-shelf CLCs was actually easier to install than its big (both the 120mm and 240mm variety).

BENCHMARKS

Kuhler Kuhler 212 Evo Quiet Kraken X60 Quiet 950 Quiet / 1250 Quiet / / Performance / Performance SPECIFICATIONS Performance Performance Mode Mode Mode Mode Radiator 6.3 x 2.0 x 4.7 inches Ambient Air 22 / 22.3 24 / 22.5 20.5 / 20.3 20.9 / 20.7 Dimensions Idle Temperature 38 / 32.2 35.8 / 31.7 35.5 / 30.5 29.7 / 28.8 (H x D x W) Load Temperature 72.1 / 67.7 69.3 / 63.3 70 / 67.3 66 / 61.8 Stock Fans 2x 12cm PWM Load - Ambient 50.1 / 45.4 45.3 / 40 49.5 / 47 45.1 / 41.1 Socket LGA1150/1155/1156/1366/2011; Support Price $100 $120 (street) $35 (street) $120 (street) AM2/AM2+/AM3/AM3+/FM1/FM2 Additional N/A Best scores are bolded. All temperatures in degrees Celsius. All tests performed with an Intel Core i7-3960X at 4.1GHz, on an Asus Rampage IV Extreme motherboard, in a Corsair 900D with stock fans set to Standard. Fan Support

maximumpc.com MAR 2014 MAXIMUMPC 81 in the lab

The Black2 delivers a 120GB SSD and a 1TB HDD in a slim 2.5-inch package.

82 MAXIMUMPC MAR 2014 maximumpc.com WD Black2 SSD+HDD One drive to rule them all

The WD Black2 is an answer to the prayers “high-performance” drives, but with hard ously can cause a traffic jam—we saw read of mobile users who have just one drive drives we don’t expect blistering perfor- speeds on the SSD drop about 100MB/s bay but want the speed of an SSD with mance anymore. We’d just like them to not when copying data to the hard drive at the the capacity of a hard drive. Unlike a hy- suck too hard, and for mobile duties they same time. brid drive, which stores all data on a hard need to conserve power, so they don’t have All in all, this drive is clearly a compro- drive but uses a limited amount of flash very big shoes to fill. The drive includes mise, but one we’d be willing to live with storage for caching, the WD Black2 fea- an outstanding five-year warranty, and is if we were constrained by a single stor- tures an all-new design whereby a single Windows-only at this time, as it requires age bay. The SSD is fast enough, and 1TB 2.5-inch enclosure houses both a hard software to “unlock” the 1TB partition. of storage is bodacious, as well. If it were drive and an SSD—two distinct drives that Once unlocked though, the partition is vis- faster it would earn a Kick Ass award, appear to the OS as such, so you can put ible on any system, or at least it appeared but for now we’ll probably have to wait your OS on the SSD and your data on the on all the Windows machines we con- until Gen 2 to satisfy all of our desires. hard drive. It’s a brilliant solution that un- nected it to; we did not verify this with a –Josh Norem fortunately gives up a bit of performance Mac or Linux machine. You can’t use two of in order to conform to the small form fac- these drives in RAID, nor can you span data tor, but if we had just one storage bay in across both partitions. our notebooks, we’d upgrade to this bad WD lists the drive’s performance specs mutha immediately. for the SSD as offering 350MB/s read The drive is a 9.5mm unit, so it won’t be speeds and 140MB/s write speeds, but sliding into any ultraportables—those re- it doesn’t list any numbers for the hard verdict WD Black2 SSD+HDD quire a 7mm drive—but it will fit just fine drive. In our testing we found the SSD to Black Drive Great engi- in a larger notebook. The SSD portion of offer slightly faster read speeds, hitting 9 neering; speed and capacity; the drive is a 120GB unit that uses 20nm 429MB/s in ATTO, and its write speed of includes SATA-to-USB cable. MLC NAND flash, though the NAND manu- 129MB was very close to spec. That’s not facturer is unknown. It utilizes a JMicron as fast as even a midrange SSD, however, Black Eye Pricey; SSD is not super- controller as well as DRAM onboard cache. so we would not enlist it for heavy usage fast. There is also a Marvell SATA bridge chip or any video work. The hard drive portion $300, www.wd.com that allows both drives to share the lone averaged 114MB/s read and write speeds SATA 6Gb/s interface. The hard drive por- in testing, which is good enough for data tion is a two-platter, 5,400rpm model with storage but not super impressive. Also, 1TB of capacity, and its “Black” designa- since both drives share a SATA interface, tion indicates that it’s one of Seagate’s transferring data to both drives simultane-

maximumpc.com MAR 2014 MAXIMUMPC 83 in the lab

Acer bundles a faux- suede carrying case with the S7 to help protect its attractive exterior, although the white Gorilla Glass lid does a pretty good job itself.

84 MAXIMUMPC MAR 2014 maximumpc.com Acer Aspire S7 Haswell adds (battery) life to the party

Despite having reviewed the original complained of the chiclet-style board’s What hasn’t been the norm is nearly Acer S7 almost a year ago, its nearly shallow keypress, a common side-effect seven hours of battery life. Thanks to the identical follow-up is no less impres- of a super-slim profile. Acer is obviously Haswell processor in the new S7, it’s the sive to our Ultrabook-weary eyes. As be- listening to its critics, because it added first time the manufacturer’s claims for fore, we’re smitten with the stylishness some depth to the new S7’s keys, making battery life have actually aligned with our of the glossy-white Gorilla Glass lid and typing noticeably better—without adding test results. We kid you not, the S7 man- brushed-metal keyboard and surrounds. any perceptible bulk to the form factor, we aged to continuously loop 1080p video for And its thin physique (.51 inches) and light might add. The trackpad, which is sizable a record-breaking seven hours (well, six weight (2.87 pounds) are still just as de- and smooth enough, still uses Elan soft- hours and 54 minutes, to be exact). serving of praise. What’s really nice about ware as opposed to Synaptics, our prefer- Clearly, Acer hasn’t taken its eye off the second-gen Acer S7 is that it retains ence. Oh, well. the ball where the S7 is concerned, and all of the first model’s exceptional quali- We also previously remarked on the we applaud the new refinements. Yes, ties but adds some new welcome fea- audibility of the first S7’s two fans under even at its lower price, the Core i5 model tures, to boot. load. Acer has addressed that issue, too, is on the high side for many folks, but if In last year’s review, we looked at revamping its push-pull Twin Air Cooling you’re in the market for a super-portable the premium skew of the S7, which cost by reducing the number of fan blades from machine that has the build quality and $1,650. This time we’re reviewing the 29 to 23, thus reducing the noise. We can battery life to go the distance, as well as step-down model (S7-392-6832), which attest that the S7 is seriously quiet. high-end style, the S7’s worth the invest- trades in a Core i7 part for a Core i5 (Has- A slight throttling of the CPU’s clock ment. –Katherine Stevenson well, natch), has just one 128GB SSD ver- speed might also play a part in the ther- sus two, and costs $250 less. mals, which brings us to a discussion of In addition to maintaining the attrac- the S7’s components. The Core i5-4200U tive styling, the new S7 also holds onto its has a base clock of 1.6GHz and Turbo po- 13.3-inch, 1920x1080 glossy IPS screen. tential of 2.6GHz, although we didn’t see it Sure, there are portables nowadays with reach peak speeds in our tests—perhaps verdict Acer Aspire S7 even more pixels-per-inch, but given this in an effort to manage temps. So, while screen’s size and Windows 8’s scaling is- our first S7 stood out from the crowd by White Stripes sues, we don’t find the S7’s resolution surpassing our very robust Intel refer- 9 Outstanding style; great bat- lacking. In fact, we’re quite pleased with ence Ultrabook in the benchmarks, this tery life; improved keyboard. its crisp picture and wide viewing angles. S7 falls short of the zero-point scores in Great White Paltry 128GB It’s a touchscreen, of course. nearly every test. To be fair, that’s pretty SSD; we wish the trackpad used Synaptics An area where change is welcome is much been the norm with notebooks of software. the S7’s keyboard. In our first review, we this slimness. $1,400, www.acer.com

Benchmarks Zero

point SPECIFICATIONS Premiere Pro CS3 (sec) 840 960 (-12.5%) CPU 1.6GHz Core i5-4200U Photoshop CS3 (sec) 100 138.3 (-27.7%) RAM 8GB DDR3/1600 dual-channel ProShow Producer (sec) 1,122 1,160 (-3.3%) RAM MainConcept (sec) 1,901 2,010 (-5.4%) Display 13.3-inch 1920x1080 IPS LCD

Quake III (fps) 358.2 332 (-7.3%) Storage 128GB SSD Connectivity 2x USB 3.0, HDMI, Quake 4 (fps) 76.1 78.9 headphone/mic input, SD card Battery Life (min) 221 414 reader, 802.11n, Bluetooth 0% 10% 20% 30% 40% 50% 60% 70% 80% 90% 100% 4.0, 1.3MP webcam, WiDi, Acer adaptor port. Our zero-point ultraportable is an Intel reference Ultrabook with a 1.8GHz Intel Core i5-3427U, 4GB of DDR3/1600 RAM, integrated graphics, a 240GB SSD, and Windows 8 64-bit. Lap / Carry 2 lbs, 15.1 oz / 3 lbs, 5.9 oz

maximumpc.com MAR 2014 MAXIMUMPC 85 in the lab

Get out the grease; you might have a bit of work ahead of you if you're trying to stuff big parts inside Cooler Master's cramped chassis.

Dream Machine Redux Spin-offs of old case favorites square off

Ah, Cooler Master and Corsair. We know you well, especially since the cases we’re check- solutely no room between the edge of the ing out here are derivatives of cases that have previously been featured in Maximum PC’s card and the hard drive bays. You’re then annual opus, the fabled Dream Machine. totally reliant on the cable-routing holes Here’s a spoiler, though: We’re not likely to pick either one for next year’s big build. cut into the tray itself to power up your We’re pretty impressed with Corsair’s offering, but a few quirks in design keep this card, which isn’t saying much. strong case from achieving a better score. As for Cooler Master, it’s time to take the Adding to the space concerns of this Cosmos SE back to the drawing board, unless you fancy a game of “Honey, I Shrunk My already-tight chassis is the fact that in- Components.” –David Murphy stalling a common ATX motherboard (using provided standoffs; they aren’t preinstalled) blocks a portion of two of Cooler Master Cosmos SE masse if you want to stash a radiator in the case’s primary, rubberized cable- Maybe we’re spoiled, but the phrase “full- place or, annoyingly, if you need a bit more routing holes—and, of course, they’re the tower chassis” tends to evoke a certain room for your graphics card. ones closest to the video card you’ve just image in our minds—a sense of space, That allows us to segue into our prima- hammered into the case. The case’s top- in particular. We hear “full-tower” and ry criticism of the chassis: It’s cramped. mounted 14cm fan covers half of a routing we think beaucoup room: tons of empty To the company’s credit, Cooler Master hole on the top of the motherboard tray, mounts for hard drives and 5.25-inch de- does specifically call out the exact mea- as well. vices, lots of room in which to work and surement of graphics cards that the case If you have anything beyond a standard move around (and string cables through- supports on its website. However, it does PC setup, you’re going to have quite a bit out), as well as a super-easy installation so using the measurement taken if the of hassle getting your cable management for parts and pieces—one that doesn’t aforementioned drive bays are removed to work correctly in this case; we sure did. feel like you’re trying to wedge a very ex- (15.5 inches in length, if you’re curious). The case does come with two large holes pensive square into a round hole. When the bays aren’t removed—and near the power supply, but you sacrifice Perhaps Cooler Master should have re- frankly, we wish we didn’t have to re- case aesthetics when you have to route considered calling its Cosmos SE chassis move them, as they’re both more useful cables right overtop your parts—at least, a full-tower, because to us, the descrip- and aesthetically pleasing than a large, we didn’t like the picture we were seeing tion seems a bit stretched. Sure, there’s gaping hole—you only get 10.9 inches of through the case’s large side-panel win- plenty of room for storage. The case sup- clearance for GPUs. dow when doing this workaround. ports no fewer than eight 3.5-inch hard To put that in real-world terms, it felt Cooler Master packs plenty of prein- drives or a whopping 18 2.5-inch drives as if we were on the verge of damaging our stalled cooling into the Cosmos SE. We (assuming you’re slapping two SSDs into 10.5-inch Nvidia GeForce GTX 480 video wish we had a built-in fan controller to re- each of the case’s eight total drive bays). card when wedging it—literally—into the duce the din (and keep us from having to Six of these drive bays can be removed en case. We eventually got it in, but it left ab- string a ton of Molex connectors together).

86 MAXIMUMPC MAR 2014 maximumpc.com We almost wish Corsair's case came with an addi- tional drive bay for SSDs; the trays on the case's rear don't quite fit.

It doesn’t, however, pack in locking mech- As you might expect, the 750D fits just drive trays for SSDs on the right side of the anisms for your 5.25-inch devices; you about any motherboard you throw its way. chassis, directly blocking the rear of the have to screw those in manually (hello, The simple ATX mobo we use for our test- 3.5-inch drive cage (or cages, depending five years ago). Two USB 3.0 connections ing felt a bit like Jack in the land of the on your configuration). It’s a pain in the join two USB 2.0 connections on the front, giants; screwing it into the preinstalled butt to route cables and manage storage in addition to a button that manually con- standoffs was easy, and we loved that it on the drive cages if you have all four 2.5- trols the case’s blue LED lighting (from was surrounded by a total of eight holes inch trays filled with SSDs. the fans). for cable routing (five rubberized, three While installing an optical drive into But really, that’s just dressing up a pig cut into the top-side of the elevated moth- one of the three free 5.25-inch bays isn’t at this point. We’d recommend the Cos- erboard tray). While you might lose one that bad (you have to pop off a front panel mos SE only to those who like meticulous- or two of these holes if your power sup- from behind and slide the drive in) the op- ly measuring out all their parts and pieces ply is larger than five inches long, that still tical drive doesn’t actually sit flush against before doing a build. The other 99 percent leaves a considerable amount of room to the covers. It ends up being recessed of you would do well with a chassis that play with. just a bit, which makes for a not-so- works for you, not against you. If you’re rocking an extended power impressive aesthetic on the case’s front. supply, Corsair makes it fairly easy to re- Additionally, the case’s top is literally move the three-bay drive cage that stands a rubber filter magnetically locked into in your path and relocate it above the sim- place atop the grilled aluminum. If you’re ilarly sized drive cage on the case’s bot- not kicking up the cooling (air or liquid), verdict Cooler Master Cosmos SE tom-right. We were a little surprised that you might not even notice this; still, it feels $170 (street), this wasn’t the 750D’s default configura- like a flimsy afterthought for one of the 5 www.coolermaster-usa.com tion, as it feels like one has an unneces- parts of the case that you’re most likely to sary surfeit of room around the graphics be staring at (whatever you do, don’t rest a card area on the motherboard when both drink on the chassis). Corsair 750D drive cages adorn the case’s bottom. These misgivings are still minor de- Militaristic in its precision, Corsair’s 750D That said, the default arrangement tractions from an otherwise excellent chassis is all about business, not adorn- does allow for a good amount of uninhib- chassis. The 750D is big, fairly easy to ments. You won’t find any fancy lighting on ited cooling to churn from the case’s two work with, and offers a great arrangement this case, nor an inordinate array of pre- front 14cm fans. A single 14cm fan gives for all but the most tricked-out systems, installed, pretty cooling for a case of this a bit of exhaust on the case’s rear; given storage-wise. size. What you do get is a ton of space to the 750D’s size, however, we’d prefer a work with: plenty of room for cable man- larger 20cm variant on the case’s top, agement, video cards of all sizes, liquid- which could help boost cooling while si- cooling support for a triple-fan radiator multaneously cutting out a bit of noise in (3x 12cm), and then some. While the case the process. offers plenty to begin with, you could theo- While it might sound like we’re gush- verdict Corsair 750D retically add even three more drive bays to ing over the 750D’s design, there are still the interior without it feeling cramped in a few quirks that keep this case from “kill- $160 (street), www.corsair.com the slightest. er” status. For starters, Corsair slaps four 8

maximumpc.com MAR 2014 MAXIMUMPC 87 in the lab

NeatConnect allows up to 50 documents in the loading tray at once.

Neat Company NeatConnect Eliminating paper clutter, one scan at a time Consider the growing pile of paper on your for expense reports or to search for docu- ables files to be sent via email directly. The desk. Yes, most of it will be tossed in the ments easily—perfect if you’re managing touchscreen interface enables a variety of trash or end up lost behind your file cabi- at-home expenses or a small business. scanning options including color, grayscale, net along with coffee coasters and PCIe NeatConnect features a sleek white or black-and-white scans. You can also en- brackets. The Neat Company aims to tidy cover; slot sizes for business cards, re- able single-sided or double-sided scan- your work surface with its NeatConnect, a ceipts, and documents; and a small touch- ning, separate or bundled files, DPI resolu- wireless scanner that digitalizes your doc- screen interface in the center. The device tions of 150, 200, 300, or 600, and popular uments and organizes them into its cloud measures 11x8.7x7.5-inches and weighs file extensions such as PDF, TIFF, and JPG. filing system. just 5.3 pounds. NeatConnect supports SD The Neat Company sports iOS and Android This isn’t the first scanner we’ve tested cards and features one USB port on the apps, allowing you to upload a photo on the from the Neat Company, but it’s the first back, for the direct transfer of PDF files go or to view files in the NeatCloud. scanner we’ve tested that uploads files di- onto your PC, albeit only in black-and- We like the NeatConnect’s intuitive in- rectly to the cloud without the use of any white when using this method. While color terface, mobile app, and great cloud ser- software on your PC. NeatConnect even and various file formats are an option for vice, but picking one up will set you back a allows you to directly upload to your favor- cloud storage, NeatConnect is designed cool $500. After three months, NeatCloud ite cloud-storage services, such as Drop- for document scanning, not photo scan- charges users $6 per month for the base- box, SkyDrive, Evernote, Box, and Google ning. In fact, the Neat Company does not line service. If you find that you’re manag- Drive. But even given the option to upload recommend using the device to scan pho- ing home- or small-business expenses and files to other cloud storage sites, the Neat- tos because it may damage them; if you’re are looking for a great way to quickly orga- Cloud is the best way to maximize value looking to digitalize your photo albums, nize and retrieve information, the NeatCon- from NeatConnect. look elsewhere. nect is a worthy investment. –Clark Crisp The NeatCloud is the most attractive Installation is a no-brainer. Upon boot, feature in this package, allowing users to the scanner requires an 802.11 b/g/n con- manage files and quickly retrieve informa- nection and a NeatCloud account, which verdict Neat Company NeatConnect tion. NeatCloud automatically scans re- can be created on the spot. Like today’s ceipts and business cards to extract valu- smartphones, NeatConnect guides you Tidy and well-kept Great soft- able data, such as total cost and contact through short tutorials and then lets you 8 ware; clean, intuitive interface. information. After the document has been begin scanning. The touchscreen interface Paper monster Expensive; scans to PC scanned, the image and corresponding enables you to save scans onto the device only in PDF. data is stored as a record in a folder. Neat- itself, your PC, NeatCloud, or other cloud Cloud also allows users to query records storage services. NeatConnect also en- $500, www.neat.com

88 MAXIMUMPC MAR 2014 maximumpc.com Heavy Rain, it’s not, but The Walking Dead: Season Two does incorporate a few gesture-based actions.

The Walking Dead: Season Two We would have befriended the cat instead We reason there are a number of you who Choose Your Own Adventure–like major im- than a game (humorously enough, given the have heard of The Walking Dead, but have pact on your future. You’ll still go through the game’s roots can be found in a TV series). never gotten a chance to exercise your same overall plot, it’s just some of the details What it lacks in clickable depth, it more than mouse fingers in this quasi-game. This might vary based on your actions. makes up for in story and narrative delivery. has led us to wonder: Is the second sea- A word about that: We love the game’s The Walking Dead isn’t very complex; you son of Telltale Games’ The Walking Dead interactive storytelling, and there’s no doubt can guess how the story will be told, but the compelling enough to make one go through that it does force you to make some fairly game’s twists—dictated in part by you, the the entire series up until this point? Could emotional choices. We even found ourselves player—keep it fresh and engaging. you even jump back in if you had a peek at empathizing in different ways and varying Astute Maximum PC readers will note that Season One but never quite got around to our character’s mood depending on how an we have yet to devote a paragraph to The finishing it? NPC was treating us. Still, the general pac- Walking Dead’s plot, unlike the style of most We’ll make this decision easy: Yes, you ing within these episodes feels a bit formu- of our game reviews. It’s not just because should buy the second season of The Walk- laic: You have a larger exploration section you control many elements of the story—no, ing Dead. where you click a lot of stuff or talk to a lot you owe it to yourself to enjoy this survival If the thought of investing roughly 13–15 of people, typically followed by a dangerous adventure to the spoiler-free fullest, how- hours or so to catch up in Season One scenario that requires a reflexes-or-death ever you decide to do it. –David Murphy doesn’t sound all that appealing, Telltale reaction, followed by a larger “pick one of has you covered. Since the game is based two big things that happen” section. Wash, on choices, Season Two can automatically rinse, repeat. verdict The Walking Dead: Season Two import the key decisions you made in the Your character, Clementine, struggles to game’s previous season. Even if you only survive in a zombie-infested world—a grip- Zombie (Cranberries) Love- finished a chapter, your decisions can have ping, gritty narrative featuring a great bal- 9 ly comic visuals coupled with an impact on your Season Two life—anything ance of quick-timing interactive elements super-easy interactivity; twist-and-turn- you didn’t get to in the first season is auto- and passive (albeit simplistic) exploration. filled storyline; minor tweaks from Season matically randomized by the game for you. The action bits feel more vivid and natural in One benefit gameplay tremendously. That said, it’s important to realize that The Season Two, and we want to kiss the designer Zombie Prom Formulaic narrative struc- Walking Dead is good at giving players the il- who thought it best that the interactive clues ture; occasional graphics issues; individ- lusion of choice. For example, you’re going to you point-and-click on disappear once you’ve ual choices could more significantly affect get attacked by a dog in All That Remains no performed the action (they persist in Season story branching. matter how you interact with the beast. It’s One, leading to much description repetition). rare that your actions will have a significant, The Walking Dead is more of a sitcom $25, www.telltalegames.com, ESRB: M

maximumpc.com MARCH 2013 MAXIMUMPC 89 in the lab

Katherine Stevenson Editor-in-Chief Hasta La Vista, Loyal Readers It’s been a blast

After nearly 14 years, and some 154 issues (give or take), I’m hanging up my Lab coat and moving on. When I first started working at Maximum PC, I was an innocent Mac-using copy editor just looking for a foothold in publish- ing. I never could have predicted that I would stick around this long. But then again, how could I not? I’ve had the extreme pleasure of working with an exceptional group of smart and fun-loving people over the years, on such an exceptional product—shoot, after just a couple issues, I couldn’t help but become a diehard PC fanatic. It’s been an honor to be part of Maximum PC’s history, and I will truly miss all the hijinks (and hardware!), as well as the loyal readers. Fortunately, I’m not going too far. I will continue to work for Future US, heading up the US edition of Mollie Makes, a magazine aimed at enthusiast crafters. So, if you’re looking to crochet a mouse cozy or embroi- der a CPU pinout chart, you know where to go for instruction. Thanks for all the memories!

My first issue: How far we’ve come!

J IMMY ThanG Josh Norem Online Managing Editor Senior Editor

The PC rocked CES this is still plenty of room for in- I spent this month apply- under load while being al- year. The highlight of the novation with larger cases. ing aftermarket coolers to most silent. Next, NZXT’s show was Valve’s unveil- And then there were innova- our Radeon R9 290X. Since G10 adapter (strapped to ing of 13 Steam Machines, tive PC gaming devices like the stock-cooled card runs a $100 CPU cooler) kept it many of which were in small the updated Oculus Rift and at 94 C, I was curious to even cooler, never letting form factor (SFF) chassis PrioVR virtual-reality suit. see how much of a differ- it get above 52 C. If you that looked awesome. It Finally, the biggest surprise ence an aftermarket cooler thought the R9 290X was wasn’t all about SFFs, how- of the show was Razer’s could make. First up was just a hot GPU, it’s not. The ever. CyberPower’s lunch- highly modular Project Sapphire’s Tri-X triple-fan reference cooler is just not box-shaped Battle Box and Christine PC. This year, my card, which kept the over- very good, apparently. Origin’s highly configurable friends, is going to be a good clocked GPU at a chilly Genesis case proved there year for the PC. (compared to stock) 75 C

90 MAXIMUMPC MAR 2014 maximumpc.com Geek First Look: tested & NZXT Kraken G10 approved GPU Bracket Attach any Asetek-based CPU cooler to your GPU Perixx

With the proliferation of closed-loop cool- costs about $4 online. After seeing the GPU Periboard ers these days, there is a bounty of options hit 100 C within one second of load activity, for those wanting to liquid-cool their CPUs. we dismantled the cooler to find the water However, very few options exist if you want block was unable to make contact with the 805L Folding to liquid-cool your GPU. NZXT is hoping to GPU, so we decided to switch to our Radeon change that with its G10 adapter, which will R9 290X reference board. Bluetooth let you attach any Asetek-based liquid cooler Installation took about 30 minutes and to a wide range of GPUs made in the past few was surprisingly painless. We unscrewed years. That includes the NZXT Kraken X40 the stock cooler and lifted it off the board, Keyboard CPU cooler, as well as models from Cor- attached the backplate with four screws sair, Antec, Thermaltake, and Zalman. The poking through the PCB, then lowered G10 adapters are available in red, white, and the cooler onto the GPU die by dropping it black, and cost just $30. A liquid cooler will through a metal ring that holds it in place. set you back about $100 bucks, so this is not Once four nuts were secured to the cor- a cheap upgrade, but it’s still less expensive responding screws, the G10 was in place. and time-consuming than investing in a cus- Installed, the G10 has a few cables coming tom loop. The G10 also includes an onboard out of it that need to be connected, includ- fan to cool the voltage equipment on your ing a cable with two female fan headers on GPU, which is a nice touch. It comes with a it—one goes to the VRM fan, and the other to two-year warranty, but NZXT warns that re- the fan cooling the radiator. One large plug moving the stock cooler from your GPU will goes into a USB header on the motherboard, likely void the card’s warranty, so proceed and provides power for the pump. with caution. When we attached the Kraken X40’s The G10 fits all the latest GPUs from both 140mm fan to our case (be sure the CPU AMD and Nvidia except for a few lower-end cooler and fan you buy fits your case; an- models that cost less than the cooler. There other hard lesson we learned in this experi- If you’re a mobile device user who’s are some AMD GPUs that use a recessed die ment) and turned it on, we could hear the been frustrated with onscreen text though, such as the HD 7970, and we found liquid making its way through the system. input, there’s always Bluetooth key- this out the hard way, by trying unsuccess- Our Radeon R9 290X idled at about 40 C, but boards. But they’re way too bulky to fully to mount the cooler to a PowerColor how it performed under load was simply as- carry around… right? Well, German HD 7970 Vortex II without a shim, which tonishing. This card normally runs at 94 C, company Perixx has a BT keyboard but with the G10 installed that folds in half to measure about it never rose above 52 C. 6.25 inches long, less than 4 inches We installed the Kraken wide, and just a little under 0.75 inch- Kontrol software and es thick. It’s small and light enough were able to custom- to fit into a pants pocket, unless ize the fan curve to our you’re the skinny-jeans type. liking, view pump and You pair it like you do with any fan speeds, and control other mobile device, but you may be the system parameters asked to enter a six-digit code on the quite easily. keyboard to authorize. In Android 4.4, Overall, our first at least, the keyboard could navigate impression of the G10 the OS, in addition to performing text is that it’s quite im- input. The fold causes some awkward pressive, and we were button placement, but it’s not a deal blown away by how breaker, in our opinion. The stan- effective it was in han- dardized, 31-inch Micro USB charg- dling this notoriously ing cable is also a nice touch, and hot GPU. It was also the price is reasonable. $35 (street), totally silent for the www.perixx.com –TM most part—making this one hell of an upgrade. Tune in next month as we dive in deeper in our You’ll need to buy the CPU cooler separately, full review. –JN then attach it to the G10 adapter.

maximumpc.com MAR 2014 MAXIMUMPC 91 comments you write, we respond

WE TACKLE TOUGH READER QUESTIONS ON... > Military Shooters > TLC NAND > Windows 8.1

The Reality of War your list and also developed of SSDs, why not just buy two on how to cope with the debacle The List, in your January 2014 by Bohemia Interactive, ARMA HDDs and run in Raid 1? called Windows 8. Don’t you issue, of the “9 Best Military- 2. While I’m not an expert on —Thomas Clair see anything wrong with that Themed Shooters” is pretty ARMA, I do know that it and VBS concept? I personally don’t good, but what caught my eye share a lot of things in common. Senior Editor Josh Norem desire the tablet/touchscreen was your remark concerning VBS does have a lot added to responds: We are entering the experience, and I never will. I America’s Army: “It’s easily the it and adjusted for use by the golden age of SSDs, Thomas, don’t want big, clunky “App” most realistic, being developed military, but these two shooters and now is a great time to invest tiles cluttering my desktop. I by the Army itself.” That’s kind share the same DNA. in one for your OS, as prices are don’t purchase “Programs” of like saying something must — Rob Wheale affordable, and performance is from an app store, and there be true because the govern- incredible, at least compared to are millions like me. What ment told us it was. I would be Online Managing Editor Jimmy mechanical drives. To answer the hell is an app, anyway? more inclined to believe that Thang Responds: We’re glad your question, though, two Microsoft has taken it on itself to the most realistic shooter isn’t you enjoyed our list. And thanks drives in RAID 1 won’t be much decide what we want or need to the one the Army developed, for informing us of the VBS faster than a single drive, since purchase! If there are freeware but more likely the one that the series, we’ll have to check it out. RAID 1 just copies everything to programs that return much of U.S. Army, U.S. Marine Corps, In regard to your comment, we the second drive for redun- Windows’ functionality, do you as well as the militaries of weren’t saying America’s Army dancy. Two drives in RAID 0, mean to tell me that the mighty several other countries use to is the most realistic shooter however, can approach an SSD Microsoft couldn’t provide them train their service members. ever made, but that it is argu- in sequential-read and -write natively? How hard would it be The shooter I’m referring to is ably the most realistic shooter speeds, but they will never, to program the ability to select Virtual Battlespace (VBS), which on our list. While the series has ever be able to match an SSD’s your desired interface on first was developed by Bohemia gotten more arcade-ish over almost-instant seek times, and startup? Copies of Windows 8 Interactive. The current iteration time, we do like the fact that thus will “feel” much slower would have flown off the shelves of VBS that is in use by the Army it takes you through a robust to you in your everyday PC us- if Microsoft had done that, but in is VBS2 v2.0 with VBS3 slated for training course and sends you to age. Those two drives will also an act of ultimate arrogance, the release in 2014. jail if you shoot your command- create a lot of heat and noise, company decided that we should I have several years of ing officers. Still, we agree with which is another area in which buy it and like it. When Microsoft experience developing scenarios your opinion that ARMA 2 is SSDs are untouchable. restored the Start button that for VBS2 and assisting Army indeed also very realistic. doesn’t do anything, I interpret units in utilizing VBS2 to train Windows 8.1: Not that as, “Here is your damn Start their soldiers on a variety of SSD vs. HDD, Round 29 Convinced button, now shut the (bleep) up.” tasks. As I remember, America’s When I built my system two I read your Skeptic’s Guide to If any other industry followed Army was developed as a tool to years ago, SSDs were still too Windows 8.1 (January 2014). It that business model, they would help with recruitment, but VBS small and pricey. Now that was very informative, and it has go under in record time. Now, was developed to train soldiers. prices have started to come convinced me that I will never I know there are people out I would suggest that a more down, I’m curious to know how purchase Windows 8. Taking there who own a tablet/touch- realistic shooter than America’s two Regular 7,200rpm hard it further, I will not purchase a screen and are happy with the Army is VBS2 and by extension drives in Raid 1 compare to an computer containing it, either. OS, and I am happy for you, but another shooter, which was on SSD? With the smallish capacity I have read article after article can’t regular desktop users get

↘ submit your questions to: [email protected]

92 MAXIMUMPC MAR 2014 maximumpc.com Facebook Polls some love, too? We shouldn’t Screen Resolution options Senior Editor Josh Norem have to cope with or adapt to (in Control Panel > Display). responds: After we got What’s Your something Microsoft wants You also get some control your letter, we looked at us to purchase. over the font sizes of some, Anand’s (AnandTech.com) Cheapskate Tip? Thanks to Maximum PC, but not all, Windows 8.1 review of the Samsung In honor of this month’s Cheapskate’s Guide, we though, for another excellent items. To remove Internet 840 Evo. In it, he estimates asked our ever-knowledgeable Facebook fans article. access for particular apps, that if you wrote 50GB of to contribute their strategies for saving dough. —G. Knipe try editing your settings data each day (a high- Here are some of our favorite responses. using Windows’ built-in usage scenario is just What Were You firewall. 10GB), the 840 Evo would Alex Tomala: PCpartpicker is a great resource Thinking?! As for the cloud (Sky- last 63 years, noting, “I when creating builds. Maximum PC lost credibility Drive), please check out the put together the table Ben Atwell: Buy your GPU in the second year. by giving Windows 8.1 an 8 Doctor’s response to the [outlining the lifespan] to verdict (January 2014). A fair letter titled “GoodbyeDrive” put any fears of endurance Jeff Humphreys: Always check Steam for rating would be 2. Windows on page 19. to rest.” He concludes by deals; never buy games at release for full price. 8.1 is half-baked crapware awarding the drive his Seth Izen: Use free open-source software just like Windows 8. In this TLC-gate “Recommended by Anand- instead of proprietary whenever possible. day and age, is it really ask- I have been a loyal sub- Tech” award, so we’re Chris Loiselle: *AMD* ing too much of a desktop scriber to Maximum PC semi-confused about the Kevin Morgan: One word—Linux! All the good operating system to let users since at least 1997 and “truth” you say he is laying software is free, too. adjust the size of all fonts? have relied on your reviews bare. In our opinion, your Dustin Lai: You don’t need a ton of RAM, and The control panel should for upgrades to my PC. fears of TLC being unreli- 4–8GB will work for most applications. have a checkbox to disable In July 2013, you gave able are wholly unfounded Peter Richardson: Track bank specials. I get and hide all the cloud inte- Samsung’s 840 Evo 1TB by real-world testing. Tech gration features in Windows SSD a 9/Kick Ass verdict. Report just wrote 500TB to cash back at Tigerdirect and Monoprice right 8 and Office. Windows Store You were like children who a TLC Samsung 840 drive, now. (Metro) apps have potential, used to wave red flags and and it’s still running. It Nathan Medlock: Sign up for the Humble but I don’t like that Windows cheer Chairman Brezhnev would take you umpteen Bundle mailing list. 8.1 provides no way for a in Red Square, buying into years to get to 100TB on Ryan Hoffman: You can get Office free/cheap if user to disable a particular a lie. You failed to warn any SSD, and Anand him- you’re a student, or if you work for a midsize or app’s access to the Internet. your readers that this was self notes that endurance larger business. This creates a needless TLC NAND, and I forked is not a concern on this Travis Bakos: Don’t go cheap. Buy good stuff security and privacy risk for over $600 for it. Oh, sure, drive. However, you are and save money by not replacing it. users. as long as I don’t edit or correct in that we called Peter Richardson: Target will price-match —Shiv Patel transcode videos and just the NAND MLC when it is do general computing, it indeed TLC. We noted it’s Amazon.com in-store. Windows 8.1 Reviewer David will outlast an HDD, but 3-bit MLC, aka TLC, but Rory Drake: Monoprice.com for cables. Murphy Responds: While it I spend good money for should have been more Kamel Kamel: Don’t get married or have is a bummer that you can’t future-proofing my rig. I clear. That said, we have children. change font sizes as eas- should have read Anand Lal never heard of a Samsung John Smith: Don’t buy a Mac. ily as in previous Windows Shimpi’s review because TLC drive wearing out its versions, Windows 8.1 does he laid bare the truth. Why flash in the real world, soHow many wa0s is your PSU? allow you to universally can’t you do the same? you should be just fine with How Many Watts Is change the size of everything —Rainys Andrew the drive for many, many (fonts included) through the Blekaitis years to come. Your PSU? 8%

[NOW ONLINE] 8% Steam Controller Preview 25% 25% The real star of the Steam Ma- chine’s hardware lineup is Valve’s 24% innovative Steam Controller. While no controller can ever re- place the precision and speed of a 43% keyboard-and-mouse combo, this is arguably the best gaming con- 43% troller yet, with its two awesome trackpads and responsive haptic feedback sensors. Valve says that Less than 500 it will support every Steam game 500 to 650 out there. Check out Gordon’s 651 to 850 hands-on impressions of it here: Less than 500 500 to More 650 than651 850 to 850 More than 850 http://bit.ly/controlmpc.

Like our page at www.facebook.com/maximumpc

maximumpc.com MAR 2014 MAXIMUMPC 93 WITH ULTRA-X DIAGNOSTICS, PROBLEMS BECOME THIS OBVIOUS.

You’re the type that can fix anything. SOLUTIONS FOR: So don’t let a tough diagnosis stand COMPUTER SERVICE SHOPS

between you and the repair. Ultra-X FIELD SERVICE TECHNICIANS

Professional Diagnostic Tools have SYSTEM BUILDERS powerful features, unmatched test PC REFURBISHMENT accuracy and impressive support resources. With Ultra-X Diagnostics, you’ll test more, test faster and lower costs at the same time!

GET MORE INFO: www.UXD.com EMAIL: [email protected]

Introducing a global tech brand that promises to change the way you consume technology

Covering the in depth latest new in detail technology fully tested gear

www.techradar.com www.futureus.com a part-by-part guide to building a better pc Sponsored by blueprint

TAKE IT FROM A GEEK.SM

Budget Baseline

INGREDIENTS

INGREDIENTS PART Price

Case Corsair Vengeance C70 $110 PART Price PSU Thermaltake SP-750M 750W NEW $90 Case NZXT Source 210 Elite $50 Mobo Gigabyte G1.Sniper Z87 NEW $160 PSU EVGA 100-B1-0500-KR 500W NEW $40 CPU Intel Core i5-4670K $227 Mobo ASRock 970 Extreme3 R2.0 ATX $70 Cooler Cooler Master Hyper 212 Evo $35 CPU AMD FX-6300 $110 GPU EVGA GeForce GTX 760 02G-P4-2765-KR NEW $250 Cooler Cooler Master Hyper 212 Evo $35 2x 4GB G.Skill Ripjaws F3-12800CL9D- GPU Asus Radeon HD 7790 2GB NEW $144 RAM 8GBXL $70

RAM 2x 4GB G.Skill Ripjaws DDR3/1333 NEW $64 Optical Drive LG GH24NS95 $15

SSD Kingston HyperX 120GB SSD SH103S3/120G $90 SSD Crucial M500 240GB $150

HDD Seagate Barracuda 1TB $61 HDD Seagate Barracuda 1TB $61

OS Windows 8 64-bit OEM $100 OS Windows 8 64-bit OEM $100 Approximate Price: $764 Approximate Price: $1,268

AMD's FX-6300 CPU retains a high price-to-performance value, Intel reigns supreme at the enthusiast level, so we're sticking so we're sticking with it for at least another month. The ASRock with the Core i5-4670K, which has a great balance of price and mobo was also on sale this month, so it stays, too. We did swap all-around performance. (The Core i7-4770K mostly just adds some other parts though, since RAM prices keep creeping up Hyper-Threading, so we couldn't justify the extra $100 or so.) and the Radeon HD 7850 video card has been officially retired. The Gigabyte Z87X-UD3H board we used before has gone up in We switched our RAM to G.Skill 1,333MHz sticks, and ditched price while the G1.Sniper Z87 has come down, so we switched the HD 7850 for a HD 7790 since the performance loss will be since it has better onboard sound and is easier to overclock. We very small. We did have to pay $30 more for this GPU than the are still using a GTX 760, because it’s in the sweet spot of price previous one though, so we had to drop the optical drive to keep and performance, and great for 1080p gaming. We switched the the price steady. The PC Power and Cooling PSU we used last PSU from the 750W NZXT HALE82 to shave off a few bucks, and time is no longer on sale, but this EVGA unit has a good rep. Thermaltake's "Smart M" series power supplies are great, so we’re happy to have one powering our baseline build.

maximumpc.com MAR 2014 MAXIMUMPC 95 blueprint

WE ORDINARILY reserve 240mm/280mm liquid-cooling for our Ultra build, but expandable loops like the Cooler Master Glacer 240L and the Swiftech H220X are starting to create an all-new super- high-end tier. So, we've upgraded from our 120mm Corsair Hydro H80i to the 240mm H100i. It's more appropriate for a $2,500-range PC, anyway. The difference in performance won’t be huge, but the larger radiator of the H100i should allow for slower fan speeds and a quieter experience. PERFORMANCE We could upgrade the CPU to a Core i7-4930K, which has two more cores than the i7-4820K we’re using, but we can’t justify the extra $250. You may feel differently if you regularly use worksta- tion apps that benefi t from a lot of CPU threads, like HD video en- coding, and we may feel differently when Intel drops its eight-core Haswell-E CPUs toward the end of the year. The Radeon R9 290X would be a great alternative to the GeForce GTX 780 Ti, since it’s almost as fast and costs $150 less, but as we go to press there is a global shortage of cards and they are impos- sible to buy.

For more of our component recommendations, visit www.maximumpc.com/best-of-the-best.

UPGRADE OF THE MONTH COOLER MASTER GLACER 240L INGREDIENTS

PART PRICE

Case NZXT Phantom 530 $130

PSU Seasonic M12II 850W $126

Mobo Asus Sabertooth X79 $315

CPU Intel Core i7-4820K $314

Cooler Corsair H100i NEW $100

GPU EVGA GeForce GTX 780 Ti $700

RAM 4x 4GB Corsair Vengeance DDR3/1600 NEW $150

Optical Drive Asus BW-12B1ST $60

SSD Samsung 840 Evo 500GB $325

HDD Seagate Barracuda 3TB $109

OS Windows 8 64-bit OEM $100 The Glacer gets our vote this month, not just because it performs well, but because it's expandable. If you buy it Approximate Price: $2,429 and decide to liquid cool a GPU later on, you won’t have to buy a second kit, since you can just extend the 240L loop using standard G1/4-inch fittings. $140, www.coolermaster-usa.com

MAXIMUM PC (ISSN 1522-4279) is published 13 times a year, monthly Canadian price includes postage and GST (GST #R128220688). PMA Future US, Inc. All rights reserved. Reproduction in whole or in part plus Holiday issue following December issue, by Future US, Inc., 4000 #40612608. Subscriptions do not include newsstand specials. POST- is prohibited. Future US, Inc. is not affiliated with the companies or Shoreline Court, Suite 400, South San Francisco, CA 94080. Phone: MASTER: Send changes of address to Maximum PC, PO Box 5852, products covered in Maximum PC. Reproduction on the Internet of the (650) 872-1642. Fax: (650) 872-2207. Website: www.futureus.com. Pe- Harlan, IA 51593-1352. Standard Mail enclosure in the following edi- articles and pictures in this magazine is illegal without the prior writ- riodicals postage paid in San Bruno, CA and at additional mailing of- tions: None. Ride-Along enclosure in the following editions: None. ten consent of Maximum PC. Products named in the pages of Maximum fices. Newsstand distribution is handled by Time Warner Retail. Basic Returns: Pitney Bowes, PO Box 25542, London, ON N6C 6B2, Canada. PC are trademarks of their respective companies. PRODUCED IN THE subscription rates: one year (12 issues) US: $19.95; Canada: US$24.95; Future US, Inc. also publishes @Gamer, Crochet Today!, Mac|Life, The UNITED STATES OF AMERICA. Foreign: US$34.95. Canadian and foreign orders must be prepaid. Official Xbox Magazine, and PC Gamer. Entire contents copyright 2014,

96 MAXIMUMPC MAR 2014 maximumpc.com

YOU DREAM IT, WE BUILD IT.®

Custom built PCs starting at $699 – Digital Storm offers an excellent range of high-performance PCs with every budget and customer in mind.

Starting At: › Expertly Built ® › Lifetime Support $699 › No Compromises

CUSTOMIZE & BUY:

The Digital Storm Logo, ‘You Dream It, We Build It’ are trademarks of Digital Storm. Intel, the Intel Logo, Intel Inside, Intel Core, and Core Inside are trademarks of Intel Corporation in the U.S. and/or other countries.